I was trying to wake up the other day and heard a radio newscaster talk about Hillary Clinton stumping for improvements in U.S. child care benefits.
I haven’t been able to track down exactly which speech included the mention of child care benefits. Maybe Clinton also mentioned benefits for people who provide care for older relatives. The newscaster only mentioned child care benefits.
Family elder care caregiving clearly needs a lot more promotional help. If only it could be a presidential election campaign issue.
All of us have been children. We all understand that someone took care of us. Many of us have an instinctive urge to care for just about every baby and small child that we see. We may wish we had more time and money to do that, but no one has to tell us we have to do that.
Understanding of informal elder care is still a lot lower. There seems to be a general sense that “The Government” will handle that, or that some mysterious rich relative who has a big house and a lot of time will show up to save the day.
One challenge with getting elder care the same kind of attention that child care gets is that the caregiving crisis is a bipartisan issue.
See also: Congressional panel to support caregivers