A daughter’s duty? Adult daughters are often expected to caregiver for older parents. In 2007, Jorjan Sarich and her dad moved from California to Idaho. It was where he wanted to live his rest time. “I left my occupation, I left my friends; he did the same thing,” said Sarich, who bought a house with her father, George Snyder, in the China Gardens neighborhood of Hailey after his health began to decline. Though a graduate student struggling to finish her dissertation（论文）, Sarich chose to be her dad’s full-time caregiver. “It’s only now, several years later, that I’m realizing how much work it was. It’s the kind of exhaustion（疲惫）that sleep doesn’t cure,” she said. About 6 million Americans provide care to elderly relatives or friends living outside of nursing homes. Laurel Kennedy, author of “The Daughter Trap” (Thomas Dunne Books, $25.95), says that women bear a disproportionate（不成比例的）share of the burden — about 70 percent of hands-on care giving such as bathing. “I want to be clear: Women don’t hate this,” Kennedy said. “What they hate is that everyone just assumes they’ll do it.” Kennedy is calling for a social revolution equal to the rise of affordable child care and day care: Employers should help working caregivers by offering accommodations. Men should step up more often. It’s unfair that women are always chosen to provide care for an elderly family member. Despite the hard work it took on Sarich — interrupted sleep and the knowledge that his 2009 death was the end game, she would do it again. Since about half a century had gone by, she wasn’t the person he remembered, and he wasn’t the person she remembered either. Caring for her father changed how each saw the other. 小题1: Why did Jorjan Sarich caregiver for her father?
|