This week, a communication scientist with a PhD commented on my LinkedIn post that compares the valuation leaders in our space give to our hours versus the hours they earn as CEOs.
He said: “CEO-level Caregiving requires a ton [of] unseen value and skill. The genuine value is hard to quantify.”
This isn’t true.
The value is easy to define and quantify. We have quantified CEO-level caregiving and valued it. Our valuation is based on the work and skills of family caregivers, just like a CEO pay package is valued on their work and skills.
We never hear that a CEO of an organization has a value that cannot be measured. Why do we say this about family caregivers, who operate their own enterprise?
My guess? It’s because so many in our space consistently describe family caregivers and their work as “invisible.”
Family caregivers aren’t invisible. Last year, I wrote about a national caregiving leader standing in front of an audience of 1,000 family caregivers and calling us invisible. He didn’t get that he was looking right at us. Calling us invisible doesn’t describe our reality. It describes his limited view of it.
The same is true of “hard to quantify.” It doesn’t describe family caregiver value. It describes the impact of referring to our work as “invisible.”
CEOs receive a compensation package that reflects their value. Family caregivers can, too.
We don’t see the work a CEO does hour after hour. We would never call that work invisible. We don’t see a CEO during his decision-making process. He makes the decision. We don’t see family caregivers during their decision-making process. They make decisions.
Why does one receive compensation but another doesn’t?
Language matters. When we call family caregivers invisible, we imply they need to be found. When we call their value hard to quantify, we imply it needs to be studied by researchers who will receive funding to measure it. Both framings keep the focus on the researchers and off the family caregivers, who are already here, already working, already generating value that we already measured, while we wait for the field to catch up.
I defined and valued caregiving work.
I did that work without grant funding, a peer-review cycle and without making you wait for methodology reports. You didn’t see me working yet you see that work as valuable. I defined the work across Nine Caregiving Domains and asked family caregivers to take five minutes to share their work and then calculate their value. Five minutes later, family caregivers walk away knowing that the average annual value of their unpaid labor comes out to $162,522.
The right words matter. Invisible leads to unmeasured. Unmeasured leads to unreimbursed.
We’re not invisible. We’re not unmeasured.
We’re not reimbursed. That’s the problem to solve.
Resources
Tell us how your caregiving experience impacts your spending.
Put a dollar amount on your caregiving work. When you calculate your value as a family caregiver, you provide us with the insights that help us effectively advocate for and about you. The calculation takes less than 5 minutes and you’ll leave with your own insights into your worth and a social media card to share. When you share your social media card, be sure to share your story. Calculate your value: https://www.careyearsacademy.com/caregiving-resources/tools/costs/save/
Want to know what it costs your community when family caregivers don’t get the help and support they need — and stop spending within their communities?Calculate the impact here: careyearsacademy.com/caregiving-resources/tools/costs/
(Image by Ray_Shrewsberry from Pixabay)
Amen! Thank you for spelling this out.
This is an important distinction. Family caregivers are not invisible, our work is just often ignored and unpaid. The labor and financial value is measurable. Thanks for sharing.