Why do some kids take care of adults?

There are 1.4 million child caregivers in the United States -- but what kinds of caregiving responsibilities do these kids shoulder? Listen in to learn why child caregivers are at a higher risk of asocial behavior, anxiety and depression.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. Kristen. There's been a lot in
the news, not not lately, just I think in general
about our aging population. UM. You know, baby boomers getting older.

(00:26):
It could tax our health care system. It's also going
to tax our caregivers. There's been a lot of studies
into this, this aging baby boomer population, but one population
that hasn't really been looked at closely is the child
caregiver population. These are kids between about the ages of
eight and eighteen who are caring for older people, whether

(00:49):
that's their parents or their grandparents in their own homes typically,
and they have kind of been overlooked. Yeah, there's been
more attention paid to child caregivers or young careers as
they're referred to UM in Australia and the u K.
But there's actually only been one large scale study conducted

(01:10):
in the US on our American young caregivers and their families,
and that was conducted in two thousand five by the
National Alliance for Caregiving in the United Hospital Fund, and
it was actually commissioned in two thousand three by the
US Administration on Aging, because there was this recognition that,
like you said, there was this population out there of

(01:32):
kids who weren't getting any attention and kind of falling
through the cracks precisely because they are kids taking care
of older people and don't necessarily have the same resources
to advocate for themselves, right. And the study really revealed
the size and scope of this group and focused on
their issues, their mental health issues, confidence issues, things that

(01:53):
they have to deal with in caring for older people.
And Josephine a Carbonel of Health and Human Service says said,
you know, they are aware that children have always played
this role in families, especially in minority communities, where they
frequently act as interpreters and care for their siblings, you know,
not just older people, but siblings as well. And then
she goes on to say, but this report reveals that

(02:15):
a significant percentage of these children are providing much more
personal and complex, complex tasks. Yeah. And in talking to
USA Today about this, Gail Gibson Hunt, who's the president
of the National Coalition for Caregiving, says, this is a
failing of our health care system because, like you mentioned
at the top of the podcast, Caroline of this aging

(02:37):
population is putting more stress on the health care system.
And as we'll look at the demographics of who these
child caregivers are, we see that they are having to
fill in the gaps where there isn't enough income or
health insurance or medical resources to to take care of

(02:59):
these older people's medical needs. Yeah, and one person who
was actually recognized for her good work in this area
is Connie Salski. Excuse me. She's the head of the
nonprofit American Association of Caregiving Youth. She was also just
named one of CNN's Top ten Heroes of and she
said in a CNN article, the kids don't have a voice,

(03:21):
so they need somebody to be their voice and their advocate.
When these children see the recognition they so deserve, along
with the academic and skill support they need, they were
able to remain in school and have confidence in themselves
and become basically healthy adults. Because one of the big
issues is, you know, if you're some kid taking care
of your mom or your sister, or your grandmother somebody

(03:41):
like that, you might not have time to do all
of the regular kid things you need to do, like
go to school or just play with your friends. Yeah.
And one of the reasons why Saskalski started that nonprofit
was because she was also a child caregiver um when
she was thirteen years old. In fact, she helped out
a lot taking care of her grandfather and sad story,

(04:04):
she actually found him dead when she went to give
him his medication, and obviously that had a huge impact
on her and a huge impact for motivating her to
start the American Association of Caregiving Youth. Well, yeah, so
let's look at who these kids are and how many
there are, because, like Kristen mentioned, this two thousand five

(04:25):
study is really the only big, large scale study of
these kids. And in the US, they found that the
number of child caregivers is somewhere between one point three
and one point four million children between the ages of
eight and eighteen. And it's one thing. I mean, it's
stressful to be a kid in this situation, but I
can't imagine being an eight year old taking care of

(04:49):
an older person. They also found that of the twenty
eight point four million households that have a child between
eight and eighteen living there, three point two percent have
a child caregiver. Yeah, and to put that into a
little bit of perspective, those numbers, Uh, it's roughly equivalent
to more than the total third through twelfth grade students

(05:11):
in New York, Chicago, and Washington, d C. Combined. UM. Now,
this is a tiny sliver of the overall like unpaid
caregiver population. You compare that one point three to one
point four million kids to the forty four million plus
unpaid adult caregivers. But nevertheless, that's still a significant population

(05:32):
when we consider the ages of you know who is
doing this unpaid work. Because the study also found that
there's a pretty even distribution among eight year olds through
UM eighteen year olds about thirty thirty thirty, from eight
to eleven year olds, twelve to fifteen year olds, and
sixteen to eighteen year olds. It's also pretty evenly split

(05:54):
between gender between male and female male versus fifty one
percent female. For the gender of the caregivers, Uh, they
found that they tend to live in households with lower
incomes than do non caregivers. They're also less likely to
live in two parent households. That's s versus so, I mean,

(06:14):
if there's no one else in the home to care
for the sick parent or sibling or grandparents it might
fall on the child right. And on top of that,
a majority of the child caregivers were the only kid
in their household, or at least the only They might
have had siblings, but they were the only ones who
had the responsibility of the household caregiving. So they might

(06:36):
be the oldest among and have younger siblings as well,
but sixty of them were the only ones in their
house doing this kind of work. And who are they
taking care of, Caroline? Most of them are taking care
of a parent or grandparent, and out of that primarily
the mother and grandmother. Uh So seventy of those cared

(06:57):
for our female and be has of that female caregivers
are much more likely to be in the same sex
caregiving relationships, So a daughter caring for a mother or
grandmother as opposed to a son caring for, you know,
a father or grandfather. And in terms of the age
of the these care recipients, as they are termed between

(07:19):
forty and fifty nine years old, those are probably the
parents and then are sixty to seventy nine years old,
and that's where that grandparent population probably comes in. Um
And in doing this research, I hadn't really thought about
it before. Even though it was a pretty significant part

(07:39):
of my life at the time. But when I was
in middle school, probably part of elementary school as well. Uh,
my great aunt actually came to live with my family,
and it was kind of an all hands on deck
effort to get her daily routine, um taken care of
in terms of getting the meal, taking her on walks,

(08:02):
or you know, if there was anything that she needed.
And there was actually a period of time when I
was being homeschooled and my mom had gone back to
work and from you know, during her work hours, like
my great aunt was my responsibility. And the good thing
is she was you know, she wasn't a handful and
there she didn't have a severe medical condition to where

(08:24):
you know, they were leaving me with something that I,
as at that age, wouldn't be able to take care of.
It was simply making lunch, watching matlock together, things like that.
Um so so yeah, I guess I'm part of this population. Interesting.
How long does she live with you guys? She lived
with us for a long time. Um, I don't know,

(08:46):
maybe six years, seven years. Uh yeah, I would actually
have to go back and ask my mom. I can't
remember precisely. Hong she lived with us UM but the
most common conditions my great aunt came to live with
us because she had had multiple strokes. But the most
common condition dealt with any situations are Alzheimer's or dementia

(09:08):
UM and followed by heart, lung and kidney disease, arthritis,
and then diabetes. Yes, and most of the child caregivers
do help the person that's they're taking care of with
at least one activity of daily living that's like bathing, dressing,
getting out of bed and stuff like that. Nearly all
the study found help with instrumental activities of daily living,

(09:30):
which is doing the shopping, the household tasks, and the
meal prep. So they looked at, you know, the task
that these kids are doing, and they found that caregivers
who help with the normal activities of daily living, the
A d L s perceived themselves as having more responsibility
than do non A d L caregivers and that they're
twice as likely to feel often that people expect too

(09:53):
much from them. And on top of performing those daily tasks.
And this was something that I did not have any
ex aarens with us is something my parents completely took
care of. But one out of six of these child
caregivers actually will help uh the care recipient communicate with
doctors or nurses. Fiercent of those twelve and older help

(10:15):
make phone calls and arrangements for the care re scimpiens
to help care for the person. And also female caregivers
are more likely to spend time, on top of doing that,
taking care of siblings as well. Now that that sounds
completely exhausting, I mean all of these responsibilities for a
young person, and that's true. That's not just me saying that.

(10:36):
Uh So. Researchers in the UK and Australia have done
a lot more studies and research into this than in
the US, and they have found that being a caregiver
is exhausting for these kids and they are more likely
to fall asleep in class and fall behind on assignments.
Not only that, these kids tend to feel socially isolated
because you know, like we mentioned, they don't really have

(10:58):
time to hang out or bring ends home like you know,
non caregiver kids do. Uh At the two thousand five
studies showed that fewer of these caregiving kids report having
a lot of time for themselves, so they're giving up
a lot of sort of there there being a kid,
time to take care grown ups. Yeah, I mean, and
this makes total sense because caregivers stress is extremely common

(11:19):
among those forty four million plus adults who are you know,
the unpaid caregivers in their home taking care of older parents,
UM and other adults. And for instance, like research has
found that for just adults, they're more likely to have
health problems with their own including heightened risk of depression,
taking more sick days, weaker immune response, lower wound healing,

(11:43):
higher rates of obesity, and higher risk of cognitive decline.
So of course we're going to see some related issues
among child caregivers. Now I don't think it's quite as
acute for most of them because the responsibilities placed on
a majority of child caregivers are much less than the

(12:03):
ones that might be carried by the adults. UM. But
like you said that, the main concern I think for
people when they're looking at this population is um, how
that stresses affecting them and possible social social isolation is
affecting them during these very formative years. Because I think, uh,

(12:26):
there's been some criticism of people from uh this is
more going on in the UK saying hey, we don't
need to like victimize these kids. You know, children are
very resilient, they can do these things. We don't need to,
you know, paint them as like what is me? Their
parents are bad for not hiring a nurse to come
in and do this for them. But the statistics do
clearly show that, um, there are some more negative behaviors

(12:49):
linked to being a child caregiver, right, just like anxiety
and depression. The two thousand five study brought this up
and was confirmed in a twin twelve study in the
Journal of Behavioral Health Services and Research that these kids
are more likely to feel, at least sometimes that no
one loves them, and this is particularly evident among kids

(13:10):
eight to eleven. Young caregivers are more likely to complain
that they feel worthless or inferior at least sometimes, and
that age group. The older age group twelve to eighteen
year olds, are slightly more likely than non caregivers to
have sudden mood changes. So there's there's a lot of
anxiety there when you're sort of when the role is
reversed child and child had grown up. Yeah, and I

(13:31):
can definitely attest to frustration that can come with having
to take care of an older person. In that situation,
and it's confusing when you're a kid because you know
that you're supposed to love this older person and respect them,
especially for me, Like I remembered my great aunt from

(13:52):
times when uh, you know, she was fully able bodied
and she always got us really neat Christmas presents and
gave us, you know, Eskimo pies, and I always look
forward to going to her house and it was a
completely different experience having to take care of her. So
I think there's a lot to be said there for
that role reversal, as you put it. And um, because

(14:17):
of that, well, you'll see a lot of escape behaviors
that can happen among child caregivers basically like wanting to
kind of get away from the situation, take a break
if they can. Yeah, and that's definitely an outlet. I mean,
there's nothing wrong with behaviors like reading for hours, going
for walks, you know, going to play outside and stuff

(14:38):
like that. It's just when those escape behaviors take up
a lot of time, when they're spending inordinate amounts of
time by themselves, that it becomes it sort of just
gets in the way of them forming relationships with other
kids or maybe bonding with the other members of their family,
stuff like that. Well, and as they grow up, there
were there were anecdotes of this in the articles that

(15:00):
we read about child caregivers among these older teens and
who are now becoming full fledged adults, of avoiding marriage,
not really wanting to start a family of their own
because of a certain feeling of responsibility, but also residual
guilt of if they start their own life and move away,
then who's going to take care of this person? You know,

(15:21):
you have to stay close to them exactly. Well, I
mean we've we've talked about all the anxiety, the depression,
you know, the the escape behaviors. Is there anything positive
that comes from young people taking care of their elders? Absolutely? Um,
I mean, there is evidence that a lot of these
kids grow up to be more mature and responsible adults

(15:43):
who are closely connected to their families. Yeah, these kids
do show evidence of high self self esteem, more empathy,
and a strong sense of belonging to their family. And
a lot of them actually grow up and go into
the healthcare or social work field, so they just transition
what they're used to at home into a career of
caring for other people. Yeah, and I think that it

(16:05):
is important to to recognize that there are positives from this,
because when a majority of these households are earning less
than dollars and you're in a single parent situation a
majority of the time, it's also clear that it's not
it's not adults doing bad things to kids and putting

(16:27):
too much responsibility on kids, although I'm sure that certainly happens.
But in the big picture, I think, like Gail Gibson
from the National Alliance of Caregiving said, this is a
bigger conversation about health care and how our communities support
each other and an entire network that ends up being

(16:47):
filtered down to sometimes a child. So in these situations,
when you have a young caregiver, what what can you
do to mitigate the risk? Well, Leanne Austin, who's a nurse,
wrote for Today's Caregiver about her own experience um with
her children having to take care of her and she

(17:09):
actually was taking care of her mother at one point.
She says that it's really important to communicate clearly with
your children or with your young caregiver in the house.
She said that they need to know that they're not
responsible for the adults or the siblings condition, because guilt
does play a significant role in the child's desire to
be a caregiver. If they think that they could have
done something better, if you know, they feel too guilty

(17:29):
to go out and play with their friends, that they
need to stay home. Provide simple and clear information about
the condition and talk about it, but just not all
the time. It's not really dinner table conversation. You want
to let your kids know that, you know what this
isn't all there is to life. Yes, you're helping me
a lot by taking out the garbage or you know,
making the beds or whatever you're doing, but you're also

(17:50):
you know, life is going on. This is not the
only thing that that we're about. Yeah, And she also
encourages adults to remain as independent as possible to diminish
possibility of the role conflict that we've talked about and
keeping in mind like what our age appropriate tasks for kids.
I mean, I helped make a sandwich and put cottage

(18:12):
cheese on a plate that was very age appropriate for
a middle schooler to do, right, folding laundry, feeding Fido,
stuff like that. It's it's different when you're you know,
having your kids try to lift you out of bed
and stuff like that exactly. And there are support groups
out there and resources, um, such as the organization that
we've mentioned before, the American Association of Caregiving Youth that

(18:35):
it's based in Florida right now, but it focuses on
finding these populations and helping them with like getting someone
in the house, like a medical professional in the house
if necessary for regular visits, getting the kids transported to
and from school, getting them tutoring help if needed, just
making sure that the support is there that they need.

(18:58):
And there's also a Young Care Network in the UK
and Australia because, like we mentioned before, they have done
a lot more looking into this young population. You know,
there was one quote from CNN about, um, you know,
people just kind of don't want to think about this,
Like they don't want to think about the bad situations
that can happen when kids are taking on all of

(19:20):
this extra responsibility of being essentially like a nurse almost
for their family. I mean, depending on obviously the responsibilities
that they have to take on, but this is definitely
something that deserves more attention. These kids need help. Yeah,
and we've we've touched a lot on or framed the conversation.
I should say more in terms of adults in need
of medical care for things like Alzheimer's or kidney disease.

(19:43):
But addiction is also um one big reason why some
children will end up in caregiver roles, and so the
Latin branch of Alcoholics Anonymous is another resource for kids
as well who are going through this. Yeah, so I'd
like to give a shout out and see you know

(20:04):
what listeners have gone through, if they've taken care of
older people in the home like you did, or if
it's been more of a long term thing, you know what,
what complications or or positives have come out of the situation. Yeah,
and I bet we have listeners out there right now
who are might have an older person living in their
home and giving that daily care for them. So we'd

(20:26):
love to hear from you. Share your stories with us.
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot Com is where you can
send them, or of course you can always head to
our Facebook and share your story with everyone. Now, before
we get onto our listener letters, have got a quick
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(20:47):
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(21:31):
Head over to Jack threads dot com slash mom. That's
Jack threads dot com slash mom. And everything on the site, remember,
is up to off. And now back to our letters.
This letter is from Dimitri regarding our Pussy Riot episode.

(21:51):
He wanted to give us a little system. He says
that being from Russia myself, I thought I would write
to you regarding the you So, I really think the
fact that they were imprisoned has nothing to do with
what they did, although the excuse of the government is there.
Putin could be criticized and called a tyrant for a
harsh sentence they received, But what he did was essentially

(22:13):
a political move. As you said, a vast majority of Russians,
myself not included, did not support Pussy Riot's actions. This
could be due to the conservative nature of the society
or a number of other reasons. Really, the fact that
they were convicted was due to the fact that although
some Russians dislike Putin, they dislike the West even more.
You have said that some journalists have reported that the

(22:35):
public thinks the band's actions are sponsored by the Western powers.
So he decided to show his solidarity with quote his
people by sentencing them to prison. Otherwise he would have
appeared weak. The next logical move for him is to
show his benevolence and release them with a smile on
his face and expect their thanks for it. I may
be wrong, but this sort of logic is very typical

(22:58):
of the circus that is called government in Russia today.
And a couple of additional points. He says LGBT rights
are practically non existent in Russia. Their protests are violently suppressed,
whereas demonstrations of ultra right wing groups like skinheads are
typically not touched at all, So thank you for the perspective, Dmitri.
And I've got another email here about our Pussy Riot episode,

(23:22):
and this is coming from Laura, and she writes, I
was most interested in the overall Western take on the matter,
as it strikes me how quick we are to forget
our own history. Upon learning more about Pussy right from
your lovely podcast, boy, thank you, I was immediately reminded
of the American guerrilla Girls from the twenties. I think
it would be helpful for people to compare the two.
While the quote unquote art the Gorilla Girls created and

(23:44):
performed was indeed art in that it was expressing ideas, opinions,
and emotions, it was not art for expressions sake. When
we look at Pussy Riot, we need to not think
of them as a band creating music just for their
and others enjoyment, but a social and political movement for
women's rights, similar to our guerrilla masked women of the
nineteen twenties, when America had our own women's rights phenomenon

(24:05):
going on. I feel that by thinking back on the
political and social situation for American women when in a
culture I can more easily relate to allows me to
better see how Russians, supporters and non supporters of Pussy
Right alike must be feeling as their whole social and
political system is being freshly challenged in a way that
is arguably old hat too. Americans and guerrilla girls are

(24:26):
still in existence today, and I'm not familiar with the
guerrilla girls from the nineteen twenties, so you might need
to work into indeed. So in the meantime, thanks for
all of your letters. Mom Stuff at discovery dot com
is where you can send them, And thanks for sharon
your insight with us on Facebook as well and tweeting
us at mom Stuff podcast. Oh yeah, and for your

(24:49):
follows on Tumbler at stuff mom never told you dot
tumbler dot com. And if you'd like to get smarter
during the week, why don't you head over to our website,
it's how stuff Works. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how staff works dot com. MHM