LinkedIn recently announced a new feature: the “career break.” Users can choose from 13 different types of time away from paid work, such as bereavement, career transition, caregiving, full-time parenting, a gap year, or travel.
It is a big step forward. But I want more. I want caregivers to be recognized as essential members of a health care team. I want the skills they honed while caregiving to be recognized as job qualifications.
My own story is an illustration. In 2017, I worked part-time in three different health care facilities, helping to manage a dizzying and ever-changing array of medications, guiding physical therapy exercises and, eventually, navigating end of life conversations with family members, clergy, and clinicians.
I was a caregiver for my father.
Caregivers are invisible linchpins of our society, particularly of our health care sector. But they are hard to find. Few would answer to the title, if asked. Many caregivers say, “Oh, that’s just being a good daughter” or “my loved one isn’t bedridden so I’m not really a caregiver.” But they are. And they deserve recognition.
The health care system discharges fragile patients into the hands of their loved ones every day, counting on these workers to keep their recovery on track with very little training and no pay. Thanks to activists, advocates, and researchers we are starting to understand the scope of their work: 4 in ten U.S. adults are caregivers and, of those, 70% reported at least one adverse mental health symptom during the pandemic such as anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and COVID-19-induced stress and trauma.
After my dad’s death in 2017, I looked back at the time I’d spent with him and all that I’d learned with a mixture of sadness and gratitude. I also felt pride. I had leaned into this role with the same sense of purpose that I had brought to any job I had done for pay. It gave me new perspective on health care, which I applied to my work in that industry. But when I contemplated making it part of my public profile, I hesitated. What would people think when they saw I had chosen to spend so much time caring for my dad?
Back then, LinkedIn was no help. Once I typed in the title of caregiver, the only icon available to me was the generic grey one, furthering my sense that this is invisible work.
I wrote to my friend Tim O’Reilly to get his input. We had talked about caregivers as examples of people who hacked home health care, who came up with elegant work-arounds for system breakdowns. He forwarded my email to Jeff Weiner, then the CEO of LinkedIn, who responded:
I checked in with the team on this and believe we do standardize the caregiver title on the site. We actually have 46,000 caregiver jobs on the platform today. The logo that fills in when you enter a position is associated with an organization (not a title), and will fill in if a caregiver selects or creates an organization page.
In other words, he did not understand the question. Those 46,000 jobs were for home health aides – professionals whose work is vital, but different from what a family member provides as an unpaid caregiver.
I next talked with my friends Alexandra Drane and Sarah Stephens-Winnay, co-founders of ARCHANGELS. They created ARCHANGELS Work to help people translate the skills and experiences they acquired as caregivers into talking points for a job interview or a new entry on their resume.
As Drane and Stephens-Winnay see it, caregivers are not taking a career break. They don’t quit the workforce, but rather are taking a different job, adding new skills, and employers should jump at the chance to get these dedicated, caring people on their teams.
I applaud LinkedIn’s progress. But I want more.
What do you think? Have you claimed the time you’ve spent caregiving on your CV?
Disclosure: I’m proud to say I’m an advisor to ARCHANGELS.
Image: Fall leaves, by Chris Weber on Flickr. Something about this photo captured both the sadness and the beauty of care work — maybe the freshness of the water droplets on the fallen leaves? The vivid color at the end of the life cycle?
Well said, Susannah. We 2 sets of parents in their 80s, our time is coming fast. I find myself in transition right now, and while I don’t have to be a full-time caregiver, there is no doubt a good portion of my transition time will be spending precious hours/days/weeks with parents and their limited left. They gave me 22 years (and more) of profound support and love. I certainly can find time for them.
Hi again, Tom. Certainly agreed about “can find time for them”!
The tough part is that while parenting (care at the young end of life) is well documented and respected, what we need to do as caregivers (later in life) is often undocumented, not very well respected as important and skilled work, and has been unrecognized by “the system.” Very, very different from parenting.
How often do we hear “He’s such a great caregiver!” the way people admiringly say “She’s such a great mom!”?
The very first thing I ever said in a healthcare meeting, years before becoming a keynote speaker, was “Patient is not a third person word. Your time will come.” I’d now extend that, and I hope the LinkedIn executives who started this great new feature can hear this: “Caregiver is not a third person word. Your time will come,” with an addition: “What will you do? What will you need to learn?”
Now I’m starting to wonder … is caregiving more like a sabbatical than a break? One emerges from a sabbatical with new knowledge and skills.
Thanks, Tom & Dave, for your comments and YES, let’s start saying “he’s such a great caregiver!” in the same way we admire other love stories.
Caregiver is not a third-person word. It’s a mantle to claim.
Boy, this triggers a sore spot for me, for reasons I may discuss later. But for the moment I want to say I was confused by your lede, because if I didn’t click through, “career break” alone just sounded like ways to take a “break” – a holiday.
Once I did click over to the WaPo article, I understood that LinkedIn is offering a way to explain what you were doing – more of a gap or hiatus than a “break.” So perhaps a note about “a way to explain what you were doing during an employment gap” would have helped.
It is not at all a break – it’s a disturbance, a disruption, an eruption, and interruption. And just as you say, it often demands (almost at gunpoint) rapid learning of poorly documented realities with no handbook. Realities that range from science (medications, side effects, treatment options, gaps in the literature, delays in adoption of new best practices) to dealing effectively with infuriating bureaucracies (in hospitals and of course insurance) to the logistics of rearranging several people’s lives to get things done … things for which we had no training, until we HAD to learn, fast, sometimes while the world was collapsing around us.
This is no break.
It almost feels like there should be some badge, some professional certification. Because there are a boatload of skills to learn – under fire.
If we could catalog those skills perhaps there would be a way to fit them into existing models of skill sets. And perhaps that could help in rationalizing pay.
Yes! Check out the ARCHANGELS Work questionnaire that guides people through turning their skills into job qualifications:
https://www.archangels.work/get-started
Love the Arch Angel approach. A definite share with many friends and colleagues. Thanks!
This terminology faces some challenges. For several years now, the Cleveland Clinic and several other healthcare organizations have called all of their employees “caregivers”, whether clinical or not to help promote their sense of responsibility for care. However, they would not list a job opening using that term. The term “family caregiver” is often used but that may be a misnomer for some who provide care for those not related. I think that caregiver or family caregiver should be a valid and valuable part of a resume, particularly if one has a missing pieces in their work history due to this challenging task.
Thanks, John, I’ve seen discussions about what to call clinicians and appreciate the sentiment behind all employees being “caregivers.”
It reminds me of a story I heard about NASA and how every employee is focused on the mission. Don’t know if it’s gospel truth, but the story goes that someone asked a man what he does for the agency and he replied, “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.” (Punchline: he was a janitor.) Somewhere I have a pic I snapped at NASA headquarters of a big Rubbermaid trash can on wheels that was covered in mission stickers.
What if everyone who had anything to do with a person who is ill was recognized as a key member of their care team? And we supported all members — whether paid or unpaid — with the information and resources they need to help get that ill person back to good health — or shepherded safely out of this life?
John, part of the blessing of being in the BMJ Patient Advisory group is that I get exposed to differences in terminology. Apparently in the UK “archangels”-type people are called carers. At first the term was jarring for me but I’ve come to like it.
I agree with you that it should be part of a resume but what to do when potential employers discount it? Over several years I’ve learned and used so many valuable and transferable skills and now that I’m at a point where I’m looking for work, I get a “uh-huh” or “What about PAID work?” The last one was from someone at AARP who was speaking with me about a training opportunity they have. Really, what’s the workaround here?
If a potential employer discounts your caregiving experience then they probably aren’t someone you want to work for. As I told my candidates when they were interviewing for a position, “how they treat you in an interview is the best you be treated if you get the job.” Being a caregiver is a sacrifice that must be acknowledged. It’s who you are and shows your values. Your values have align with your employer, just as if your the employer, theirs must align with yours as a company.
Better to find out earlier than later.
It’s obvious Jeff Weiner has not been a caregiver. It’s a complex extremely taxing role. For me it’s been more difficult than any job I’ve had or company I’ve built. Maybe the hardest part about it is that it’s not looked in the same respect as a “job”. I always feel I should be doing more; doing things other than caregiving. This creates a constant sense of anxiety.
We need companies LinkedIn, actually we need LinkedIn to do more. They can lead the way and give caregiving the respect it deserves.
Hi Clay – great to see you here.
Susannah, mulling Clay’s “need companies to do more” comment leads me to wonder – are there differences in caregiving perspective in companies with high-ranking women executives? (I ask that because, as we’ve often discussed, women are by far most likely to be the lead family caregiver.)
Clay, you hit the nail on the head. It was immediately obvious that Jeff had not yet had the life experience of being — or truly seeing — a family caregiver.
Your tweet thanking me for writing this post captured how I felt when I received his reply: “It left me proud, motivated and angry. The lack of true recognition caregiving is given in this country is a travesty.”
I couldn’t decide at the time whether to feel envy or pity. Envy that he’s had an apparently carefree life with no experience of serious illness or lingering death. Or pity that he has not experienced the love story of caregiving, has not looked into the eyes of a vulnerable fellow human and said, “I’ve got you.”
Happily, Alex and Sarah picked up what I and others were putting down and created ARCHANGELS Work.
How can we redefine the role of the caregiving in society? Maybe as Dave said, “it’s primarily looked at a female role”; so in our stubbornly patriarchal society we demean it. I wish I had even a genesis of an idea how to do it. It won’t be corporate-driven, unless an enlightened one see the well-being of it’s talent as being pinnacle to it’s profitability (which it is, but still).
Maybe it’ll take a new type of organization to usher in this evolved society attitude. Maybe that could be the role of the DOA structure and it’s co-op ancestry. After all, in this structure the talent owns the company. Maybe if we look past the miserable idea Meta (Facebook) has for the web3 and metaverse, we can actually have societal benefit come from it. And maybe redefining the role of the caregiver could be one of those benefits
One theme that resonates with making this a broader cultural and economic conversation: caregiving is infrastructure. I linked in the post to Caring Across Generations, which (along with partner orgs) published this report:
Building Our Care Infrastructure for Equity, Economic Recovery, and Beyond
https://caringacross.org/carepaper/
And if you don’t yet follow Ai-jen Poo, fix that now!
https://twitter.com/aijenpoo
Wow! Everyone, SERIOUSLY click the Link Susannah put in a sub-reply to me above. (I wish I could paste in a screen grab.) BOOM: Archangels (with logo!) on a CV.
https://www.archangels.work/get-started
And note that URL is archangels.WORK
And read this brilliant page, too. https://www.archangels.work/for-companies
“…we want you to know that being an Archangel for a loved one is a real job that requires and develops many of the same skills as paid positions.”
Susannah, I’m grateful for this post in the context of the LinkedIn feature. I confess that until now I’ve never taken the time to understand what ARCHANGELS is doing.
Hooray! So glad you had a chance to click through. ARCHANGELS is an incredible initiative and I’m proud to be working with them.
I just made my beautiful 81 year old papa his second coffee for the morning. Went to put manuka honey in it and realized there was just a wee bit of that gorgeous nectar left. My dad and I agreed (conspiratorially) that there was NO WAY we were going to waste that last little bit – since manuka is ‘WICKED EXPENSIVE!’
My dad’s a depression baby.
We poured the hot coffee into the plastic honey container and gave it a good shake – no better way to make sure we didn’t miss a drop. You can imagine what happened next. Lots of laughter, lots of mess, hot coffee and honey everywhere and just the littlest bit of that coffee left to devour. Which somehow made it only and all the better.
My dad used to live in Austin, Texas – but we moved him to Boston to live with us on December 22nd. We’ve had lots of these moments since.
I know I’m the luckiest. I’m also COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL. Juggling my beloved papa, a 15 year old feeling his oats, a 17 year old feeling the pressures of ‘the rest of her life’ (WHY DO WE DO THIS TO THESE KIDS?!), a loved one across the country experiencing a crisis, a man to love on, and a job that has stolen my heart.
All at once.
We’re making coffee together and part of me is exploding with love, while the other part of me is full-on panicking about all I have to do today. Because I have the greatest job in the world – building a platform and a movement to celebrate, honor and support the 43% of adults in the US right now serving as unpaid caregivers. They are the invisible backbone of our nation as you all know. Most of all, I know I need to steal the time to celebrate Susannah’s post: to print it, to LITERALLY kiss it, and to post it on my wall – in a place where I can feel it beaming down on me. I’m also going to print each and every one of these comments that feel as torn from each of your souls as Susannah’s is torn from hers… because that’s what it is to be a caregiver.
Being an unpaid caregiver is a job. And caregivers need to get credit for that job: https://www.archangels.work/
And that job is intense – and we need support in that intensity: https://www.archangels.me/
Getting support requires seeing ourselves in the role, being validated in our reality, and getting cross-walked to resources that can help. Knowing your intensity score (are you ‘in the red’?) and what drives it is a key part of that: https://www.archangels-cii.me/
Before COVID, 8% of us were ‘in the red’. As of COVID that number went to 24%. In the last month it’s jumped to 29%. Fear of inflation, back to the office stress for non-essential workers, global instability, even fear of war. The other night I was explaining to our son, Leo, that one day we’d move in with him and he’d care for us like we’re caring for his grandad. He said ‘There’ll be a nuclear war way before that can happen.’ Wow.
Being ‘in the red’ is associated with a 91% risk of at least one mental health impact (anxiety, depressive disorder, COVID19 TSRD, started or increased substance use, or serious suicidal ideation in the last 30 days). Maybe Leo’s ‘in the red’…
I’m a full on Archangel now. As an unpaid caregiver, I’m a personal assistant, a financial advisor, a legal aid, a chauffeur, a cook, a house keeper, an innovator, a negotiator, a therapist, a benefits counselor… Oh, make no mistake about it… being a caregiver is a JOB…and it’s a job that requires, builds, and results in REAL FREAKING SKILLS.
My dad’s dad died when he was eight. His mum had a mental break and was institutionalized. His grandmum moved in to care for him and his brothers and sister. There were five of them. She’d wake him in the morning with a hot coffee – in bed. Years later he realized that while they had no money, and she was scrapping and saving to raise those five kids, what she did have was love – which she gave freely. They were rich in that love. That’s the currency caregivers have: LOVE. And they give of it freely – often with no recognition or return.
All you Archangels out there – we see you. We deeply respect the work you are doing, and the love you bring to it. Thank you. Pass it on.
Susannah, your post brought me to tears!! My husband was diagnosed with Myelodystplastic Syndrome (MDS) exactly three (3 — gasp!) weeks after I started a very exciting, new job with a large healthcare marketing agency. His health declined rapidly and within a few weeks he was being kept alive solely by twice-a-week transfusions as he and our family went through all the tedious but necessary steps to prepare for a bone marrow transplant, which he had in August 2021.
Family Medical Leave was not available to me, since I had not been with my employer long enough, and I couldn’t risk losing my job since 100% of our health benefits were through my new employer. And so I plowed forward focusing one day, one hour, and at times, one minute at a time. It’s all I could do.
Juggling a very demanding new job while also being caregiver and Patient Navigator for my husband and Chief Support Officer for our two boys and our extended family left me hanging by a thread more times that I can count. I was a living example of “You don’t know how strong you are until strong is the only choice you have.”
I agree wholeheartedly with your post. Caregiving teaches us incredibly valuable life skills and lessons. We learn how to blend compassion with tough love; how to stay incredibly organized in the midst of chaos and overwhelm (you should see the “pharmacy” I set up in our laundry room and the dynamic Google spreadsheet I created to manage the 40+ medications my husband was on post-transplant!); how to analyze complex medical studies and lab results; how to remain calm in life-or-death situations (I’m still working on this one!). We learn the true meaning of courage and we learn how to teach our children what that means through words and actions, when all they want to do is escape. And we learn the value of putting our own oxygen mask on first, or perhaps more importantly, we learn what happens when we don’t.
And yet, with all these valuable life lessons, why do I still hesitate to add “Caregiver” to my LinkedIn profile? Because I’m concerned that companies will see that title and be afraid to hire me; they will think I’ll be too distracted. My husband has made it through the worst of his treatment (we think), but he still has bad days which means I still have days when I’m juggling client calls with runs to Walgreens for medications to relieve his symptoms. So I’m concerned that anyone looking at my profile will focus more on the part-time caregiver job I still need to do and won’t take the time to learn that, despite juggling multiple big balls this past year, I actually got a big promotion at my new agency. Or that I was given credit for turning around a struggling account. Or that I helped secure several millions of dollars of new business. I’m concerned that the term “caregiver” still carries too much stigma within certain industries — ironically, even for those of us who work in healthcare. And so I wholeheartedly applaud the work Alexandra Drane and and Sarah Stephens-Winnay at ArchAngels are doing to help remove this stigma since no progress can be made until it’s gone. Bravo!
Julie, thank you – on so many levels. I’m traveling for the holiday weekend but wanted to quickly respond to your beautiful comment. I laughed w chagrin at the image of your laundry room pharmacy and learning about why we put in our own oxygen masks first!!!!
Again, thank you.
I’m surprised this post doesn’t cite a page 1 article by Katie Johnston in Sunday’s Boston Globe (April 10). https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/04/09/business/unpaid-family-caregivers-workforce-burden-grows/
It includes Archangel, cofounder Alex Drane, and its Caregiver Intensity Index.
More excerpts, since it’s a paywalled newspaper:
“A Cambridge man turned down the opportunity to go back on tour with a Broadway production to care for his mother, who has dementia. A Boston woman with a master’s degree worked a series of low-level jobs as she grappled with the needs of a son with severe learning disabilities. A legal receptionist in Portland lost her job after her daughter’s seizure led to a 52-day hospital stay, and more care at home.”
Massachusetts Caregiver Coalition https://macaregivercoalition.org/
“Caring for family members with special needs makes it difficult to maintain a job even in the best of times. Pre-pandemic, one out of three reported quitting a job because of their caregiving responsibilities, according to the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers.” https://www.rosalynncarter.org/ … “Caregiving is hard, even on the good days when it brings joy and fulfillment. It requires dedication, determination, and time.”
“A recent Federal Reserve report https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/2022-02-mpr-part1.htm#xthelimitedrecoveryoflaborsupply-513ccedc found that caregiving is the second-largest factor contributing to the current labor shortage, after the surge of retirements.” <=This one may suggest a special opportunity to think about job-relevant skills developed during a caregiving stint.
"Beltre, 44, a marketing professor at Bentley University, and her sister, who is a lawyer, EACH spend about 40 hours a week doing almost everything for their mother." (Emphasis added) "Her coping mechanism is simple: 'I just overwork myself.'" <=This one makes me think, I bet a professor and a lawyer don't go through this without learning something. Can we harvest what THEY say they've learned??
Thanks, Dave! Another excellent source is this 10-minute Greater Boston segment featuring Alex Drane and Peri Beltre:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OutC2iR4Lno
Read the post, and all the comments. Wishing I could click “like” on all of them! But what I haven’t seen yet is … something that touches on the kinds of experiences I had, as a single mom of a disabled kid, and a teen with mental health challenges. What does caregiving look like when it’s parenting, sure, but above and beyond? When someone is working fulltime, or taking 2-3 jobs at the same time because there isn’t any other income? Working from home in the evenings and weekends, taking consulting gigs, multitasking on the consulting jobs after everyone else has gone to bed, after quick cheap meals homemade (because buying premade is too expensive), answering emails from teachers frustrated with the disabled kid, calming the kid down, talking them through their homework process. And then the nightmares, and the chores, the health challenges, training the teachers what-when-how to do, trying to ensure the kid isn’t given and food triggers or physically/emotionally abused, and trying to calm down the teachers who were abusive because that’s how their system works. It just seems to me that if caregiving isn’t just being a good daughter, it’s also not just being a responsible mom. Yes?
100% yes! Thanks for adding that perspective.
Thank you for continuing to bring these important conversations forward!
Hi Susannah,
Thanks for this post. This is an important topic for many as we emerge from Covid.
Years ago, I managed my mother’s care after her cancer diagnosis. I juggled her needs while being newly married and traveling every week for business. I was fortunate to have the support of my boss and so was able to stay employed during the year I took care of my mother. In fact, today mark 15 years since she passed. I was spent and I lost the job a month later. Then, and now, I think companies still expect us to do our jobs and not let personal matters intrude. A couple years after my mother passed away, I was called on to arrange and manage various appointments for my father long distance to treat his t-cell lymphoma, occasionally accompanying him and my stepmother to appointments at academic medical centers in Chicago, Dallas and Jacksonville. Fortunately, I could do this given I was consulting and my schedule was flexible. Business was good and people could reach me easily. He passed away six months after the recurrence of his lymphoma. I don’t think employers saw value from such personal experiences and there was almost a shame in not being able to manage family matters without affecting work.
Since then, I went back to grad school, shifted my focus in health care to quality and started a family. When Covid came, my family was hit particularly hard. I was consulting and my wife had recently gone back to work to an editing job she had for eight years with a major journal. We relied on her job for excellent insurance. Our daughter has profound developmental disabilities and epilepsy. I ended up being her full time caregiver and companion when there was no school and few aides available to hire. Until two weeks ago, I managed her life that included school, telehealth and in-person medical appointments, therapy visits at home and in clinic – for more than two years. Fortunately, she was recently accepted to a wonderful residential school where they have a team to help her. I certainly learned a lot about our healthcare system from the patient and family perspective. This was the hardest, most demanding work I’ve ever done. Coupled with my previous work experience, I think my recent experience could be a great asset to an organization.
I look forward to learning more about communicating about these career breaks or gaps and preventing them from being career enders.
Cheers,
Stephen
Stephen, you are truly an Archangel!
One exercise that I’ve done: Create a resumé that lists every job or role you have ever had, including volunteer work, caregiving — everything. Write a description for each one that includes the tasks, skills, what you learned — everything. You will never send this document out to anyone, but it may give you perspective on what you have done. And it’s a great resource for when you are applying for jobs that may tap into an experience you had as a caregiver.
Also, in case you haven’t yet checked it out, here’s the Archangels Work page. Let us know what you think!
Thanks, Susannah.
I appreciate the words of encouragement, tips and the Archangels Work page. I’ll take a look. As much as I want to move on from the past three years, I’m still in process of recuperating and catching up. Little by little.
Cheers,
Stephen
There are 1.1 million women in America still not back to work because of COVID. I wonder what the number would be if we counted caregivers (or even mothers) who weren’t staying at home before the pandemic.
Thanks for your post and for everything people like you and Alexandra do. When I was being interviewed for a marketing position at a cybersecurity VC platform that was filled with ex-generals and entitled millennials who were trained to “crack anything” one of the partners asked me what was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Feeling my heart start to beat I said, “searching for a cure around the world to help my daughter who had a rare undiagnosed disorder as I worked daily to help her overcome her challenges.” He didn’t expect that answer and I got the job but when negotiating my terms I said to them…”look twice a week I have to take her to therapy” and it was definitely almost a sticking point, but we got past it. In the end, I couldn’t stay in the role because the “heart” experience I had gone through for many years made me realize that the next thing I needed to crack was the caregiver problem which is overflowing with people who are addicted to stress and struggle daily with fear and love and then eventually lose themselves. I understand that caregivers shouldn’t be ashamed to say “I’ve used up every aspect of my being to care for another and I have sliced through mountains and sleighed dragons” and yet at the same time, while work helps on many levels, these people need to re-create themselves first before they can go back out there…that’s where I come in ❤️
Thanks for sharing your story, Tanya.
I found your site and appreciate the work you are doing. I signed up for the newsletter.
❤️
Is this situation different in other countries? Europe and Scandinavia, particularly.
I’m not just talking about employment considerations, though that’s core. I’m wondering if a lot of the work US caregivers do is stuff that’s handled in some companies by the social welfare systems we hear about.
Susannah, Did you see the article in AARP Bulletin (nowadays my favorite magazine) about the crisis in caregiving? Lots of facts, lots of stories—good to get everyone in on the conversation and keep it going!
Thank you!
Thanks for the tip, Diane. Is this the article you read?
Family Caregiving: A View From the Inside
https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/home-care/info-2022/history-of-family-caregiving.html
I agree — it’s excellent.