It's very hard to balance being there for somebody else and taking care of yourself.
Across society, the lion's share of caring responsibility - whether for children or elderly relatives - still falls on women.
I'm blessed to be living this dream of writing and singing, but that's not the real dream I had. The real dream was to make enough money to take care of all the pain and suffering that my mother has been through.
It is not alone the fact that women have generally had to spend most of their strength in caring for others that has handicapped them in individual effort; but also that they have almost universally had to care wholly for themselves
Family caregiving has become a predictable crisis. Americans are living longer and longer but dying slower and slower.
When I lost my husband [Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn], I just didn't want to work so hard anymore. I hate that I didn't quit things a lot more before he was gone. I stayed home for six years to take care of him but, at some point, I also felt I had to go back to work.
My whole life has been nothing but trying to find a way to take care of my mom and take care of my family as quickly as possible.
Once you're in charge of your job, your house, your children, getting the food on the table, doing all of this, all of the time, it'd be nice for someone else to be in charge for a bit maybe.
My daughter lived with my wife being ill since she was 2.
My mother had Alzheimer's, and it's a desperately, desperately cruel thing to witness.
Being a caretaker is, and never will be, an easy job; in fact, it is that hardest job in the world and many times a thankless job. You have to be the pillar of strength even when you feel like you are crumbling to pieces inside.
We [women] have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years, the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are, according to statistics, at present in existence, and that ... takes time.
It's harder to take care of kids than it is to make a movie.
My wife Lucy was very sick for nearly three years prior to her death. At one time, I was in the hospital with her for six months.
I know several women my age who are really poor...because they spent most of their energy taking care of children.
The elderly are all someone's flesh and blood and we cannot just shut them in a cupboard and hand over the responsibility for taking care of them to the state.
Workplaces still operate like it's 1962 and one person is always at home, and they are not very good at adjusting for the fact that a majority of women work and take care of children.
My father was unwell when I was 11, had a stroke at 14 and died when I was 18. My mother going to work at seven in the morning and coming back to look after him and me and my brother left its mark on me.
As well as writing novels and doing short-order journalism, I am also the full-time carer of my husband, who has Alzheimer's. Each day feels like a race that must be run.
Being a mother is like trying to hold a wolf by the ears,” Gram said. “If you have three or four –or more – chickabiddies, you’re dancing on a hot griddle all the time. You don’t have time to think about anything else. And if you’ve only got one or two, it’s almost harder. You have room left over – empty spaces that you think you’ve got to fill up.
Far more than dreading ending up in a care home myself, I dread having to put my husband in one.
There are orphans that can be cared for; but this some will not venture to undertake, for it brings them work more than they care to do, leaving them but little time to please themselves.
Because my dad died when I was young, and I have a severely disabled sister, I couldn't really push the envelope at home.
Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life.
A mother should never be blamed for working.
