‘She’s my daughter, why can’t I?’ One in eight “business carers” in their early 50s is a party to this too harsh choice.
His 78-year-old mother is diagnosed with cancer. Seeing her physical and mental decline, she suggests that her mother use long-term care insurance services, but…
The number of “business caregivers” who take care of their parents while working is increasing. They may think, “My parents are still healthy, so they’ll be fine,” but one day they may suddenly find themselves faced with a choice between work and caregiving.
What should business caregivers do to make caregiving compatible with work?
Using the experience of Aina Nishizaki (49 years old, pseudonym), who decided to leave her job because she could not balance work and family care, as a case study, in the first and second parts of this report, I discussed this issue with Jun Kawauchi, representative of “Tonari no Kaigo,” a non-profit organization that provides consulting services to companies to support caregivers.
A mother’s frustration with caregiver services explodes when she sees that her parents are not doing what she really needs: ……
I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for decades. I still cook better than you guys, and I’ve had a housekeeper to do my cleaning for a long time. What can you people do for me?”
At a “care plan meeting” to discuss her nursing care plan after she was certified as requiring long-term care 1, Aina Nishizaki’s mother (age 79 at the time) told the care manager, helpers, and visiting nurses, “I have been living alone for a long time, and I don’t know what you can do for me.
Her mother, who had lived alone for a long time, prided herself on being a professional cook, and even at nearly 80 years of age, she never cut corners. She does not miss her daily stretching exercises, and she is very active in socializing with her friends. When she became aware of her declining health, she hired a housekeeper to help her with cleaning. Seeing her mother like this, Ms. Nishizaki, who lived nearby, and her sister, who lived far away, felt assured that they would have no trouble caring for their mother in the future.
However, at the age of 78, she was diagnosed with cancer. Seeing her mother’s physical and mental decline, Ms. Nishizaki suggested that she use long-term care insurance services for her future. Her mother was open to the idea, saying, “I have paid my premiums for long-term care insurance. However, after receiving certification as requiring support 1 and having her mother come once a week for 30 minutes of housework assistance, mainly cleaning, her dissatisfaction exploded.
She said, “A housekeeper is sufficient for that kind of cleaning. The time is so short that we can’t have a good conversation, and since we have a different helper every week, we can’t build a relationship of trust with them. It’s just too tiring with all the people coming in and out.”
Seeing that her mother was still able to do household chores on her own, Ms. Nishizaki decided not to use the service for the time being.
Later, as her illness progressed, she decided to receive home nursing care twice a week. She applied for long-term care again based on the nurse’s recommendation and her fear that it would become difficult for her to live on her own in the near future.
Despite her daughter’s concerns, her mother made the following comment at a care plan meeting,” Ms. Nishizaki recalls with a wry smile.
“In response to this statement from my mother, the care manager asked, ‘What is it that you really need help with, if you could just tell me that,’ and she said, ‘What I need you to do now is to replace the buttons on my pants that I have lost weight rapidly and can no longer wear. Can you please do that for me?’ And he said, “Yes.
Everyone fell silent, and I, who was listening to the progress of the meeting in the next room, was already frozen (laughs). After a while, the helper was about to say, “I can’t guarantee the quality, but I can do something like buttoning a button at ……,” but my mother said, “I only told you because you asked me what I was having trouble with. What’s the point of having a service that doesn’t do what you really need?’ I repelled her.
My mother is a person who clearly says what she thinks, no matter who is on the other end of the line. I was afraid that I might cause trouble for everyone because I had once offended a doctor before.
Regret for not being there for her mother’s pain and not treating her kindly
Her mother wanted a nursing care service to “take care of her housework for her, which she could no longer do due to her illness. She also insisted that since she was going in and out of the home of an elderly person who lived alone, the helper should be fixed to one person and a relationship of trust should be established.
He was always very critical of what the government was doing (laugh), so he soon realized that what he wanted was not going to happen, and he said, “Well, then, why don’t you just hire a housekeeper at your own expense? In fact, he negotiated with the housekeeper, who also had experience as a helper, to increase the frequency of her visits, and he also asked friends and relatives to help him by paying for part-time work.
At first, my mother tried to find a replacement in her own way, such as asking my eldest daughter to return home frequently to lighten the burden on me, who was ill, but she could not find one as she wanted. I came to the conclusion that I had no choice but to take care of her.
Ms. Nishizaki considered using long-term care insurance services in order to balance care for her mother without quitting her job, but after this meeting, she informed her care manager that she was abandoning the use of such services and decided to leave her job.
For the next year, until her mother’s death, she traveled back and forth between her home and her parents’ home, doing the shopping, laundry, assisting with cooking and cleaning up, and accompanying her mother to the hospital several times a month. She managed to eliminate her own toilets and change her clothes on her own, but when she felt uneasy about taking a bath alone, she asked Ms. Nishizaki for assistance.
“I explained to her that she should ask the nurse because she was afraid of falling, but she said, ‘I just need a little support, she’s my daughter, why can’t I do it'” (laughter).
I always bathed before bedtime, so if I asked the nurse to assist me, I would only be able to bathe during visiting hours. I think she was also frustrated that she could not maintain her own lifestyle and that she could not move around as much as she wanted to, but she gradually became more and more dissatisfied with me. I suggested that she move into a facility, but she stubbornly refused. Even though I had said that I would be the one to enter the facility (laughs).
I was also deeply tired of it. I was angry at my mother, who was always talking about ideals, saying, “Medical care and nursing care should be more attuned to the hearts of the elderly,” and why I was the only victim. I have nothing but regrets.
Safety and security are more important to children than parental pride. Hence the great discrepancy that arises.
According to Ms. Jun Kawauchi, representative of the NPO “My Neighbor’s Kaigo,” there are many caregivers who, like Ms. Nishizaki’s mother, “refuse helpers and day services.
Jun Kawauchi, the representative of the NPO “To Kai Go,” says that there are many caregivers like Ms. Nishizaki’s mother who “refuse helpers and day care services. They want us to understand their feelings of anxiety, but we don’t know if they are really rejecting the helpers or not. More importantly, he or she may not understand his or her own feelings.
If he says that he is a better cook than the helper, and that is why he can still do it, then he should cherish his pride. However, family members tend to think about the safety and security of the person who needs care first. This is where a big discrepancy arises.
As her mother’s illness progressed, Ms. Nishizaki, too, worried that no matter how good her cooking was, she might be injured by fire or burns. However, her mother, who took pride and self-esteem in her cooking, probably saw her daughter’s concern as nothing more than an “unnecessary worry.
She said, “The only way to deal with such a gap in values is to let it slide, but it is difficult. The strategy is to “keep your distance” from the parents. In Ms. Nishizaki’s case, she should have decided to leave the meeting so that she would not have to listen to the conversation during the meeting and leave the rest to the professionals. If she had done so, she might not have given up on using nursing care services.
Also, Ms. Nishizaki was concerned that her mother made comments at the care plan meeting that annoyed the caregivers, but the comments themselves were not bad or anything, and I don’t think the helpers were annoyed. No, they may have been somewhat troubled (laughs), but there are cases where people suddenly pull out a knife and say, ‘I’m going to stab you, get out of here. I think this case was rather a very important statement to improve the skills of the caregivers.
For children, the impact of a parent’s words is certainly significant, and they may be easily influenced. However, in order to balance work and caregiving, it is important for children to make autonomous decisions without stopping to think about what their parents say.
He further emphasizes, “Japanese people are not the only ones who have the ability to make decisions.
He further emphasizes, “Japanese people have a saying that goes something like this. Many Japanese people think that ‘being a caregiver means being close to one’s parents, which is a form of filial piety, I believe that resetting this mindset is the biggest challenge for business caregivers.
I believe that the biggest challenge for business caregivers is to reset this mindset.” The majority of people who see their parents aging and declining would like to be there for them, but is it wrong to think so?
In the second part of this article , we will discuss why it is a mistake to think that “caregiving = filial piety” and delve a little deeper into how caregiving can be balanced with work.
Jun Kawauchi Representative Director of the NPO “My Neighbor’s Kaigo” Born in 1980 . Graduated from Sophia University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Social Welfare. After working for a nursing home placement business, a foreign-affiliated consulting firm, and as a home and facility care worker, she established the citizens’ group “My Neighbor’s Kaigo” in 2008, which became an NPO in 2002.
Interview and text by： Keiko Tsuji
