Family Care for the Busy Woman

“How do you do it all?” That is the most common question I get from family, friends, students, residents and other random people who want to know how to fit in a busy career, raising three children, having a home to enjoy, a spouse to beat up on, and some time for myself. (Only kidding about the spouse—he’s there generally to help.) Our general division of labor: I manage the inside, he does the outside.

My answer: “I don’t do it all. I have lots of help.”

“But you can afford it!”

Well, so can you. So can anyone. It all depends on your priorities and how much you want to shift your energies and your resources from one mindset to another.

Step 1. Ask yourself, what are my needs? As residents we had call duties that would take us out in the middle of the night. We couldn’t risk being both called and leaving the children alone. Our days would be long and busy and coming home at night we didn’t want the few hours we had to be filled with chores and arguments about who was going to do what. (BTW, only once in 28 years did I have to wake Jeremy, age 7 and Dana, age 5, to take them with me while I cared for a sick child. I planted them on the couches in the OR lounge. It worked, but I wouldn’t want to do that too often.)

We needed people whom we could be there when we weren’t and who we could trust to care for the children, care for our home, and care for us. We chose the live-in concept because then we would get to know this person well, and feel more comfortable with her as part of our family life. Some people require more privacy or have other needs, and they should take a different approach.

Step 2. Ask yourself, what are my resources? Some have extended families to rely upon. However, in our mobile society, grandparents and other family members are often busy in their own active lives. So if you have family who you want to help, that is great. We didn’t. So we decided to find someone to be part of our family unit, primarily to help with the children but who would also care for us.

As residents, what little money we had, we decided to spend it on a nanny/homemaker—what I now call a family care giver. We have never driven fancy cars, belonged to a country club, dressed in designer clothing, worn a lot of expensive jewelry or spent our leisure time in fancy pursuits. In other words, we decided to spend our money on a family caregiver. We always paid at the high end of the scale, provided room and board, and provided transportation in order to make it work. We shifted resources from things to people. Some of the excellent and unanticipated by-products included our now grown children’s attitudes towards how unimportant material things in life can be.

Step 3. Ask yourself, what exactly do you want your family care giver to do? This is the hard part. This is the part that takes a lot of thought and planning. And the answer is always: It depends on what your answers are to questions 1 & 2. It took me many years to figure out what worked best for us, and to some extent it is still an on-going project as our needs constantly change.

Next post: Creating the family caregiver who will work for you.