I wrote this post many years ago and want to share it again here. Because my feelings on the topic have only intensified since then.
My plunge into the language of family caregiving began when I spotted a post on Twitter (now X) many years ago.
When caregiving expert Debra Hallisey wrote an article to express her concern about how the “parenting our parents” reference is an all-too-common phrase, I chimed in to agree and add a cringe-worthy phrase of my own: the “burden of family caregiving.”
Similar to what Debra did, I then DuckDuckGo’d (my preferred method of search) “burden of family caregiving” on my phone and received first-page results of six research studies published in academic journals using this burdensome term.
While it’s good that content with such status offers evidence-based descriptions of the need for more support for family caregivers, I worry about the negative connotations it carries with it.
Such dark language suggests to caregivers that the critical support they’re providing for their family members should be defined as something overly difficult to bear, and communicates to those receiving care that they have indeed become what they always feared they would someday be.
Photo by Jomarc Nicolai Cala on Unsplash