How to get the most out of caregiving

Need to know

Care is an inevitable part of life. We all begin our lives receiving care and many of us will end our lives that way too. The majority of us will also spend much of the time in the middle giving care. This includes the time spent caring for our children, sick friends or family, and/or elderly parents. You might like to think of people as primarily independent, but the bulk of our lives is spent in relationships defined by dependence.

Caring – or being in an ongoing care relationship with someone who relies on you to survive – is hard. There is no way around this. Having another person depend on you is a significant responsibility, even in the easiest of circumstances. In the most difficult of circumstances, you will likely experience a daily struggle to meet the most basic needs of the person you are caring for, let alone your own.

At a practical level, caring often has a negative effect on our bank accounts, sleep schedules, ability to exercise, socialise and tend to a number of other basic needs. This is all made worse by the fact that many of us live in societies that fail to support parents and caregivers, or carers as they are called in the United Kingdom. (For the rest of this Guide, I’ll use the words caregiver and carer to refer to anyone who cares for another on a regular basis, whether for a child, parent, spouse, partner, sibling, relative or friend.)

But just because something is hard doesn’t mean it can’t bring you meaning – or pleasure. In fact, it is often the challenging things in our lives that bring us the most meaning, and care is no exception. Think about all the things that are widely accepted as both meaningful and challenging, whether hiking a tall mountain, going on a silent meditation retreat, or fighting injustice. In all of these experiences, we accept that the difficulties and benefits are tangled up, and we wouldn’t get one without the other. Why not afford the same complexity of thought to care?

Care is central to the story of humankind

You have probably heard the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’. It is the best-known description of evolutionary theory, and one often misattributed to Charles Darwin. But Darwin was equally invested in sympathy, the ‘all-important emotion’, and he believed that ‘communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best’. In other words, people are not just competitive, we are also collaborative and caring, and the care instinct is central to our species’ survival. There is no humanity without care. Or, more to the point, you are making humanity happen through care.

Unfortunately, this is easy to forget, considering how unseriously care has been taken in the realms of popular culture, philosophy, religion and more, either by denial or trivialisation. Sure, we’ve praised motherhood, celebrating figures such as the Virgin Mary and the average mom by way of effusive Mother’s Day cards. But idealisation is not the same as careful consideration or contemplation. Carers have been locked up in metaphors for goodliness and, as such, never taken seriously as real people with something to say.

Few books, movies, memes or even organised religions have presented familial care as a pathway to epiphany, self-knowledge or fulfilment. Literature is especially lousy, with many examples of men going it alone to find truths. Take Henry David Thoreau, for example, who found it ‘wholesome to be alone’ and repeatedly claimed that being unfettered by dependents and attachments is the best way to find truth. When my 11th-grade English teacher read from Thoreau’s writing, I took his words wholesale, ignorant that, should someone have written about caring for another with the same intensity that Thoreau wrote about living in a cabin by a pond, the text would have been equally rich and insightful.

When I had my sons, I saw it as the parking of a car after a long journey; an end to a decade and a half of adult life in which I indulged my independence and sought the real stuff in the great out there. But care surprised me. I began to realise that there is much to discover at home, alongside people who need you, and the more I opened myself up to that experience, the more care enriched my life.

Care is not the end of real life, interesting life or important life. In fact, for me it was, in many ways, the beginning to my most intellectually, philosophically and spiritually demanding and inspiring life yet. The more I began to see that, and the more I let my caring self enrich my other identities, such as being a writer, a friend and a wife, the more I enjoyed it.

This Guide is for those of you who, like me, have been stirred by care and want help unpacking the experience. It is also for anyone who feels they are being swallowed by care, and hopes to find a new lens on the experience. Lastly, I do hope some non-carers take a peek, and that it might inspire them to offer more support, respect and curiosity to the carers in their lives.

What to do

Don’t think about care in simple black-and-white terms

Because of the fundamental lack of curiosity around the experience of care in the wider culture, our language when speaking about it is often stunted. You may notice that many people, perhaps yourself included, tend to fall into using simplistic clichés that paint care as harmonious, heroic or hellish – denying care complexity and nuance.

So, as hard as it can be, try to avoid speaking about care as a fairytale or as a nightmare. Instead, speak about the messy middle, and ground it in the very real humans and relationships involved. If someone asks how it is going, try to be specific about what you find challenging and what you find meaningful. Trust they will be curious about your experience, instead of rushing through easy praise or complaint.

The same goes for conversations you have with yourself. I’m not suggesting anything like a gratitude journal, so much as making an effort to consider the fullness of the experience. I’ve found in conversations with caregivers, and I’ve had many by now, that people aren’t used to talking about it or even thinking about it much at all, at least not with any nuance.

A few examples will show you what I mean. Maybe you think about how your child is sleeping poorly and how they just made their first joke. Your parent is struggling to remember to take their medicine and you just had a nice stroll together in a park. You miss long, meandering walks home from work and you appreciate the time watching that person, young or old, fall asleep at night, knowing you were the one who calmed them down and made them feel safe.

And while you are at it, think about how all this made you feel. What was challenging? What was enlightening? These answers don’t just affect the way we remember the past, but also help create a framework for the future. Future frustrations might feel less frustrating when we remember that they are part of a much richer, more complicated experience.

Apply what you learn in care relationships to other relationships

Another way to increase your appreciation of caring is to see it as an experience that will teach you skills to get closer to others in your life, specifically those who aren’t directly dependent on you. Care relationships are a powerful training ground for understanding vulnerability and interdependence – two key foundations for relating to others.

Caring forces us to be better listeners of other’s needs, and to treat their inabilities, failures and foibles with compassion. You have the opportunity to learn to be compassionate and patient, and remember that each and every one of us deserves dignity.

I’ve found that caring for my children has made me a better spouse, partner, friend and colleague. The better I got at attuning to my children, while also, importantly, maintaining the boundaries I needed to sustain that attunement, the better I got at doing it with everyone else.

For instance, it took me too long to realise that the more I saw my husband as someone I should care for, and who should care for me, the smoother our disagreements went. By caring for my sons, I learned how to really listen and the importance of trying to see the world through other’s eyes. Now I try to do that with my husband and, to the best of my all-too-human ability, everyone else.

I suggest trying this with anyone in your life who you want to be in your life – but who you struggle with sometimes. Remember that, as much as we aspire towards balance, relationships are often asymmetrical, and there are times when we have to give more, and times when we need more. Attempting to keep things in equal measure will only drive you mad.

Take breaks often and without guilt

For so long, especially in the West, there has been a fundamental lack of curiosity about what giving care was like for carers. As such, we tend to see care as something minor – a footnote to life rather than life itself. One result of this blindspot is believing that care is small and therefore something one should be able to endure all on one’s own. This is, of course, patently false.

When you see care as big as it actually is, then it makes perfect sense that people need to reboot and fuel up. We don’t blink when endurance athletes need to take a recovery day, or high-powered CEOs go on holiday. Caring can be just as, if not more, demanding, because it is a job we keep on the weekends and the evenings, and one that we feel we can’t ever quit. And yet, so many can feel as though our need to press pause once in a while must mean there is something wrong with us.

Breaks can be long or short. Some carers have an instinct to hold out for relatively big ones, such as a weekend away, but as glorious and necessary as that may sound, it can be hard to plan, not to mention often costly – and, therefore, unlikely to happen. So try thinking small and often; commit to a daily-ish walk around the neighbourhood, a weekly-ish coffee with friends or, if you care for small children, find somewhere to go with childcare. I have successfully parked my kids for a very crucial once-a-week hour thanks to gyms and houses of worship that let me leave my children somewhere safe while I get to do something else.

Don’t forget you need care too

Caring for the vulnerable makes the carer more vulnerable. You might not have the time you need to complete basic life tasks, or make sure your body, mind and soul are in working order. Anyone who cares needs someone who cares for them, and all carers should try to create a network of people who can give them what they need.

This care can take a variety of shapes and forms, and range from everything from a text chain of friends who make you laugh, someone to cook you a warm dinner, someone who offers to weed your garden for you, or any of the million others ways one human or group of humans can make another person feel as though they matter and aren’t alone. Remember, humans are wired as deeply interdependent beings and one of the best parts of this wiring is that we feel good doing good for one another. Asking for help and building a network of carers for carers, a network of mutual care, only thickens our bonds and makes everyone feel good and with purpose.

Summoning such a network out of thin air can feel overwhelming – yet another item on your already full to-do list. The goal should be to start small. Can you commit to a once-a-month potluck with friends? Regular check-ins with a friend who welcomes both moments of complaint and moments of gratitude? Or maybe you join a community, by way of a pickleball league, organised religion, or a parks clean-up group? Finding connections outside the care relationship can come by many different routes and sustain us in a multitude of ways.

For me, I’ve found care for myself through a friend group of other families who have an open-door policy to one another’s children. If a family is at home, and can watch our kids, then I am pretty much always free to drop our kids there – and vice versa.

Stop multitasking when you can

It is tempting to try to do the online shopping while bathing your son, while cleaning the humidifier, while asking your child about his day. It is tempting to answer work emails while helping your parents with their bills, while searching for a new part for their broken vacuum, while listening to them tell a story about their youth. Technology has made multitasking all too possible and maybe sometimes it is necessary.

But you lose something when you multitask, and that thing is presence. Only when you try to be one person doing one thing when you care – paying full attention to the people for whom you care and understanding their needs and figuring out how you can meet them and, ultimately, connecting with them – do you open yourself up to the beauty and grace of the experience. Presence is how care moves from a to-do list item to a relationship, one that can stir us in positive ways.

My main piece of advice is one I trust you all agree with, and have heard many times before. And still, it is so hard. Put down your phone. It hijacks your brain into thinking there is something better to do, even when you are doing something that should be low-key and utterly pleasant. I was recently at a birthday party with delicious food, a DJ and an open bar, and everyone was on their phones. If people can’t resist the phone while at a party, resisting the phone while caring doesn’t stand a chance. But I promise: you will feel more relaxed, less stressed and much happier if that tiny world-portal is in another room. OK, not always, but often enough, and especially during either meaningful or intense moments when authentic attention will help you feel a state of deep connection with the person you are with, rather than feeling stressed.

Reject the idea that caring for others isn’t productive

One of the reasons you might multitask when you’re providing care is because you’ve been led to believe that care is not a productive use of your time. There is an economic reason for this. Care has long been ignored in our attempts to value our economies and assess productivity.

But when some economists estimate care’s economic worth, the numbers are staggering. Globally, unpaid care work is worth $11 trillion if every hour spent on care was paid for at the local minimum wage, according to a 2018 report from the International Labour Organization. This would make it 9 per cent of the global GDP. In the United States, the same report found that unpaid care work is worth roughly $2.5 trillion, or 14.7 per cent of the GDP.

When I did some back-of-the-envelope accounting using some of the same tools economists use to measure the value of care, I learned that I would make as much as my husband if I were paid for my parenting. I’ve never been particularly interested in measuring myself by my salary, but this gave me deep relief. Money is a primary tool for determining worth in our culture, and suddenly I felt as though I was worth much more than I had ever imagined.

Beyond the economic value, care is the primary way by which we ensure all humans live with dignity, a primary value of a world in which we aspire to human rights for all. It is as valuable as more overt political activism, a one-human-at-a-time way to ensure that the needs of others are being met.

In the case of parenting, care is how we make sure each child has an opportunity to live up to their capabilities and contribute to society as an adult. A large body of research shows that when children receive good care they grow up to be happier, healthier and more productive members of society. Banish the thought that care in the case of children is inherently self-indulgent!

I often hear about parents who feel awful about the fact that they aren’t doing more volunteer work, whether it is cleaning up the local park or canvassing for a cause or candidate they believe in. Of course, some of this desire comes from a very good urge to help make the world a better place. But it also comes from a place of wanting to appear to be good people who give back – someone who is earning their keep in society and useful overall. I always remind them that care is all of the above!

When making decisions about the best use of your time, do your best to avoid seeing care as less important than more publicly acknowledged and celebrated activities. Remember that when you’re giving care, this too, is giving back.

Consider care as a realm for philosophical and spiritual growth

What does it mean to lead a good life? Or to be a good person? Connect with the universe or the divine, or whatever you call it?

The philosopher Nel Noddings sees care as a chance to practise the kind of moral attention and receptivity that other philosophers, such as Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch and Martin Buber, have discussed in other contexts. ‘The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself … to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is,’ wrote Murdoch in The Sovereignty of Good (1970). What is care if not an exercise in routinely unselfing? A way of aspiring to be a better human being?

For many of us, our first exposure to ethics comes from the phrase ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. It’s a perfectly lovely idea, and appropriate for small children, but ultimately limited. What you learn when you care is that what you want done to you isn’t necessarily what others want done to them. I often want very different things than my kids do, or I believe my kids need one thing when they say they want, or need, another. Attempting to get out of my own way, and see the world through their eyes, has been a profound philosophical education. It has challenged my sense of right and wrong, and introduced me to a wider variety of visions of the good life – visions I have begun to incorporate into my own.

As for the spiritual piece, a number of modern-day, often feminist, theologians encourage us, when we care for another person, to see ourselves as partners with the creative forces of the universe (or what some people might call God). To embrace one person, to see them and give them what they need, should be seen as embracing the whole universe. It’s holy work.

Caregiving and religion are, upon close inspection, quite similar. Both inspire awe, humility, ecstasy and despair, and big questions that don’t tend to come with easy answers. The mysteries of existence we grapple with in religion can all be found in care. I think many of us have long known this, but the more people who say it out loud, and the more people who treat carers with the same awe and curiosity with which they treat those who go on long silent meditation retreats or read the entire Talmud, the more we’ll see care’s spiritual might.

For too long, people who need care, and those who care for them, were treated like interruptions to a pure and structured, spiritual experience. If you are a spiritual person, try to find a community that acknowledges carers and makes it easy for them to be part of collective experiences. This could include such things as childcare, or a tolerance for any human who moves a bit more slowly, thinks a bit differently, and relies on someone else to get by. If the community or organisation is open to having your parent with dementia there, for example, then you as the carer will feel all the more comfortable. Or the community might turn to carers for spiritual wisdom and insights. Maybe a carer is asked to give a sermon, or share their insights in another fashion.

Recognise the difference between a happy life and a meaningful one

Research suggests that satisfying our own needs can make us feel happy, but that this kind of happiness doesn’t help make our lives feel meaningful. That comes from having a sense of purpose and satisfying others’ needs. Yes, this can mean more stress and anxiety, but it also brings a sense that we did something with our one-and-only-lives.

Of course, carers, like all people, deserve a little bit of both: fleeting, selfish happiness and ongoing, hard but rich, meaningfulness. You just need to remember in those unhappy care moments that the benefits are not the same as a fun night out with friends. Instead, they are slow developing, long term, the big-picture plotlines in our lives’ stories that shape and colour who we are and who we can become.

Part of what makes this hard to see in our lives is that we tend to see care as a daily to-do list, instead of a slow-brewing transformation with a big arc. Am I happy every morning when the alarm goes off and I know that, despite all our best intentions, getting everyone to school on time will inevitably lead to strife and friction? No, I’m definitely not. But with all this work I’ve done digging into how care has shaped me, I am able to let go of that stress much more quickly and reorient myself to the fact that I have these two humans whom I love, who depend on me, and caring for them is one of the biggest, richest things I will ever do in my life.

When you widen the aperture on caring for others, and see it as both an essential and meaningful part of life, not in spite of its challenges but because of its challenges, you stand to get more from it.

Links & books

Caring Across Generations is a US-based care advocacy organisation that works hard to expand our narratives of care. They host talks, virtual screenings and share curated lists of television shows and movies focused on the stories of carers. There is something about seeing care on the screen that helps convince us carers that what we do is interesting, important and worthy of attention. Sign up for their newsletter to learn more.

There is a new generation of influencers on Instagram dedicated to documenting their care experiences in deeply personal, vulnerable and expansive terms. I particularly like the account of Jessica Guthrie, who cares for her mom who has Alzheimer’s disease. She manages to cover the breadth and depth of care without falling into clichés, and the comments section feels both honest and life-affirming.

The book Caring: A Relational Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (2nd ed, 2013) by Nel Noddings is a philosophy book about care, which is deeply readable and relatable. This was one of the first books on care I read that really moved me. At first, I was in shock and awe just seeing care taken so seriously. Then, I felt a bit of rage realising how rarely the subject of care came up in my education. But then I dug in, and felt so inspired and energised by the way Noddings puts care at the centre of moral development, and helps us navigate the very real and thorny moral questions we face as carers.

The book On Caring (1971) by Milton Mayeroff is a slender, wise book that also looks at care through the lens of philosophy and meaning-making. Mayeroff presents human dependency and relationships as places of both discovery and safety. ‘Through caring for certain others, by serving them through caring, a man lives the meaning of his own life … he is at home not through dominating, or explaining, or appreciating, but through caring and being cared for.’

The Substack newsletter universe has opened up conversations about the relationship between creativity and care, breaking free from the idea that the two are a zero-sum game that has long dominated cultural criticism. I love Nicole Graev Lipson’s newsletter Thinkers Who Mother and Nancy Reddy’s series Good Creatures, both of which offer us new ways to think about care and the artistic and intellectual possibilities that lie within the experience. Sign up and you’ll witness the way the friction from care can be productive and generative.