Giving Thanks

Click on the title of this entry and you will go to a NY Times article about women leaving careers to care for their elderly parents. There are a lot of statistics about the disproportionate percentage of women who do this - as compared to men. But that's not why you should read it.

Somewhere after all the niceties about this high-powered reporter moving home to help care for her father who has Alzheimer's (Can you say "book deal"?), is an interesting truth. As women approach their fifties, many are finding that they "no longer have anything to prove" and that the careet path is no longer fullfilling. The necessity of caring for one's parents helps these women to fill that cultural gap.

I am so thankful that I never felt like I had to prove anything in my job - I never asked for or sought more responsibility or authority - it was just given to me maybe because I was there or maybe because someone thought I could handle it. So I've never felt like I needed a change suddenly - now - as I reach retirement. I've just always wanted to be something different.

I am so thankful that I was able to help my parents and still have a job. Unlike the woman in this article, I had few resources and they had even less.

That is what is inherently wrong with this type of reporting. It is about an affluent family - there are many families doing this on one tenth the income.

Let's see articles about them.

I would be thankful for that, too.