Eldercare and the Home Office: Making it Work
By Barbara Friesner

Now, after “only” 35-40 years, due to the sheer quantity of working women; more men speaking out about and being involved in childcare responsibilities; more men in senior positions with families and working wives; and more women in senior positions, accommodating childcare is pretty much “socially acceptable”.

JUST WHEN WE THOUGHT WE WERE HOME-FREE, Baby Boomer women are now facing a new “women’s issue” . . . eldercare. In fact, eldercare has replaced child care as the #1 cause of absenteeism and on-the-job distractions and is, for many Baby Boomer women, creating devastating career and financial consequences.

TO MINIMIZE THE IMPACT OF ELDERCARE, more and more Baby Boomer women are choosing to work from home. It sounds like an obvious and easy solution and, for many it is. However, there are factors that can blur the lines between your work and eldercare responsibilities that you will want to consider before taking that leap. Here are a few:

Work done at home isn’t work
Vicky-D men (members of the Victorian/Depression Generation) were the breadwinners and they went to work. Vicky-D women were the homemakers and care providers and they stayed home. So from a Vicky-D’s generational perspective, a woman at home isn’t really “working”! In addition, while Vicky-D’s may hesitate to interrupt their sons, they rarely have such inhibitions when it comes to their daughters, resulting in a drip, drip, drip of interruptions.

The nature of eldercare
Unlike childcare, which has a predictable progression of needs – and the assurance of larger blocks of time when the kids go to school – eldercare is generally unpredictable and is, at least initially, intermittent. So, while eldercare may require less time in the beginning, as time goes on, it will require more – turning the drip, drip, drip into a flood.

The nature of women
Many women (including me!) have a hard time setting and maintaining boundaries – especially where our parents are concerned. It’s hard enough when you have the buffer of going to an office outside the home, but doubly so when that buffer is no longer there.

THE KEY TO SUCCESSFULLY BALANCING THE HOME OFFICE AND ELDERCARE then is, rather than blending and blurring the lines between work and home, separate more and the lines sharper right from the beginning. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Have dedicated office space – ideally a room with a door. With laptops and wireless internet access, it can be very tempting to work from the couch, your bed, or the backyard. As comfortable as that may be, it’s important to do office work in your office.

2. Set scheduled work hours/days and make sure they’re known to ALL – including your spouse, children, and friends.

3. Make eldercare arrangements (a senior center, senior day care, home aide, “senior-sitter”, etc) to cover all of your scheduled work hours/days – not just for client or office meetings, but on a regular basis.

4. Schedule specific days for eldercare appointments, and specific times in the day for making and receiving eldercare-related calls and/or emails.

5. Install a separate office phone line or install caller ID and an answering machine on the home phone and screen non-work and non-emergency calls

6. Establish home work rules, for example, what is and isn’t an emergency, and discuss them with all appropriate parties.

7. Once the boundaries are established . . . stick to them! As difficult as this may be, the boundaries you set – and maintain – will be the key to your long-term success!

8. And last, but by no means least, talk with your family, friends, and co-workers and enlist their aide and support. There are a lot of Baby Boomers facing the work-eldercare balancing act. By speaking up and joining forces, perhaps it won’t take 35 years to make eldercare socially acceptable, too!