Doing Care Work Without Being a Caregiver
Grappling with moving on from thinking of myself as “caregiver,” while care work is still my reality.
I feel some inner changes coalescing for myself this spring. A tension mixed with an opening. As if my roots are lengthening into the surrounding soil and loosening its grip around me. As if my stem is beginning its journey upward, pushing through the layers of soil above. I don’t know what kind of plant will burst from the soil. I don’t know what shape its leaves will be.
I never fully recognized the work of caregiving until I became a mother. There were ways I took care of my sister, family, friends or partners before then of course, but nothing so physical, so ongoing, so demanding. I adopted a dog three years before my first child was born. I was unemployed for the first few months after adopting him, so I was with him most of the time. He came with his own quirks, neuroses and challenges, but I don’t remember caring for him feeling hard. I walked him at least twice a day. I took him to several weeks of training courses. I cleaned up after his nervous pees in the house. It’s not like he was never annoying, that his barking was never too much, but I don’t remember ever feeling worn down by needing to care for him. I felt mildly irritated sometimes, which turned into a stressed guilt after I had to juggle caring for him with caring for my children. But, still, I never had thought of caring for him as LABOR or CARE WORK.
My relationship with care work feels complicated. No matter how hard I try to accept care work, I find myself rebelling against it often. Perhaps I should differentiate between care work and house work. Maybe I run away from house work more than care work? For now I’ll keep them lumped together. The dynamics are similar and both are what is traditionally expected from a married female, from a mother.
Here’s what I don’t like about care work:
It’s seemingly constant demands. There is always someone begging for my attention. There are always cleaning or cooking chores to be done. It feels as if there is never respite from the work of living. Like I can never rest.
Which leads me to maintenance work. Care work is ongoing work. It is something done repeatedly to maintain the house or the family. It is never done. It is often undone within moments of being temporarily completed. I often dream of living alone, because then messes wouldn’t “magically appear” when my back is turned. I would always know what to expect in terms of what level of work is needed to maintain my household. I was raised to be a good capitalist worker, I need those checkmarks on completed projects, but living primarily as a caregiver means those boxes are constantly erased again and again. It is maddening.
I don’t like how unfair and un-reciprocal it feels to me. This may be an area of dislike that I can adjust with a perspective change, but for now–I don’t like how I tally things up in my head even when I don’t want to. How I’ll tit for tat to see if someone else in the house has also done house work today. Or if someone else has done emotional labor on my behalf today. I’m not sure if it's a middle child thing (or if I even believe in middle child things), but despite years of working through these dynamics, I still find myself dealing with how unfair it feels.
I know a lot of this should be put at the feet of the system. The lack of support for families in this country. The breakdown of community in favor of isolated nuclear households. The misogyny of unequal partnership and expectations of the mother. I know all of this, but it doesn’t always make dealing with it in the moment any easier.
I’ve been reading about the “plight of the mother” and about care work for some time. I’ve looked at it through the economic and historical lens with Silvia Federici. I’ve dipped into the collective care work as defined by the disability justice movement. I’m trying to step out of the cycles of these negative dynamics I’ve found myself mired in. I’m looking for a new angle or perspective. I know there is more to learn.
I can sense that I am pulling away from my “old” identity of mother. My kids will be school-aged by the summer. My time with infants, toddlers and pre-K kids is done. It feels like I’ve been dragging the stories I told myself about what caregiving is like for too long. The complete breakdown that can come with middle of the night caregiving. The rage and utter sadness that can come from the one millionth toddler tantrum or refusal to do something like sit down to put on socks. The feeling of being victimized by my circumstances. I’m not proud that I identified myself as a victim in my early motherhood identity, but it's true. I felt so caught in everything swirling around me and mostly powerless to change anything.
But now I am beginning to see how raising children will become a bit more like living with roommates. How their own individual personalities and priorities are coming to light. How our lives will be more about giving one another space and support to do our own thing. About negotiating compromises. That is quite a transition in itself. Learning to provide that space and grace to your child. I suspect it is another ongoing practice.
So I feel myself pulling away from the stories I told myself about caregiving and early motherhood. There’s a bit of grief to it. A guilt of betrayal. Just like when the pain of losing someone begins to lessen and you want to keep it close because it reminds you of them. A part of me feels guilty to let the pain of early motherhood recede into the gauzy haze of memory because I had vowed to remember and not be like one of these older moms who say that “it's the shortest, longest time” with a smile. I know I can’t stop this evolution, this maturing of self and I know I don’t really want to, but I acknowledge that every change comes with a kind of grieving.
I don’t know what I’m moving towards. It feels as if I’m attempting to push caregiving into a secondary role in my life where it is not equated with my identity, which feels positive. A person’s identity should not be caring for others even if it is what they do. It is exciting to sense the possibility of having more space for myself, for something new even if I’m not quite sure what that is. Perhaps the difficulty of knowing comes because none of the circumstances of my care work are changing.
That’s the tension I feel in this period of growth. I can sense a pulling away from caregiving stories of the past, and yet, care work still makes up the bulk of my day. I homeschool two children. I make most of the meals for my family during the week. I do most of the cleaning and physical chores around the house. These facts are in large part due to my partner’s chronic illness. I also know that his needs for care taking could increase in the future.
The point isn’t a list of what everyone in my life needs from me. The point is that while I feel as if I am transitioning how I think of myself away from “caregiver,” care work is still a reality of my day. I am trying to make sense of this. I am trying to see how models from other communities, such as the disabled and chronically ill community, can help me frame my ongoing care work in a new light. Can it be more positive? Can it be more about community/family-building than about drudgery? How can this care work feel good to both parties (me and the recipient)? If I put away the negative stories I’ve been telling myself for seven years and begin to imagine something different, what possibilities are there?
There is no tidy conclusion. This is an ongoing transformation. The stem has not yet broken through the soil and I have not yet seen sunlight. It’s as if another version of me is standing at the edges of my periphery, a blurry form that is not quite there. I’ve been asking myself, what does this new me look like?1
When I discover the shape of these new leaves, I’ll let you know.
What transitions are you sensing for yourself? What places are you not ready to move on from?
All images published in Stutter Over Silence are original artwork created by the author, Katie Gresham, unless otherwise noted.
My always pulled back hair, uniform of practical clothes and lack of adornment seem to not fit so well for me these days. Like many inner transformations, I’m sensing an outer one too. Ensuring that it comes from my own preferences and resists any external gaze is a whole other project (and post).