Introduction

In this episode, the focus is on the concept of care work, particularly through the lens of being a mother and a child caring for their parents. The speaker's mother has recently become an empty nester and now takes care of her father, who lives far away. The mother has taken on the role of a caregiver without any prior education. The speaker has witnessed her mother's life completely change as she prioritizes her father's needs, even dropping everything to be with him when he has health issues. The importance of infrastructures in supporting care work is discussed, as well as the significance of self-care. The speaker's mother talks about her own plans to prioritize self-care in the future. For this episode of Care Work in Today's Society, I want to focus on the idea of care work through being a mother and at the same time being a child taking care of their parents. In the past few months, my mom, Robin Rourke, has become an empty nester and has become a caretaker of her father. The slight complication being that her father, my grandfather, lives 150 miles away in Northern Iowa. My mother has become a care worker without any education on what it means to be a care worker. Over the past few months, I have watched my mother's life completely change as she has become a primary caregiver for my grandfather. If he is having health problems, she drops everything she is doing to drive two and a half hours to be with him. She and her brother share the responsibility for being with their father when he has doctor's appointments, but if something comes out of the blue, my mom is the one to leave her life to care for her father. After 22 years, my mom has finally gotten both of her daughters out of the house and then she instantly became a new type of caregiver. Caroline Levin in her piece, Infrastructures for Collective Life, writes that there are quote, many definitions of infrastructures and they include social services such as schools, hospitals, child and elder care, unquote. In my interview with Robin Newark, I asked her about the importance of infrastructures when caring for an elderly parent and how our society should build more to support children as they become care workers for their elderly parents. Alison Bechdel writes about the importance of self-care and why it is okay to take time for yourself as you are going through life. In her book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, she writes that she is quote, not just writing about fitness, I am writing about how the pursuit of fitness has been a vehicle for me to do something else. The feeling of my mind and body becoming one, unquote. While Bechdel does not specifically state this as self-care, to take care of the mind and the body is a form of self-care, Robin Newark talks about how self-care and how she hopes to prioritize hers in the coming months. Without further ado, here is my interview with Robin Newark.