More men are becoming family caregivers

USA Today

21-02-2025

More men are becoming family caregivers | The Excerpt
On a special episode (first released on February 21, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: With an aging baby boomer population, the demand for family caregivers in the U.S. has never been higher. While traditionally, most family caregiving has fallen to women, men are now increasingly joining their ranks. Although both sexes face a financial, emotional and physical toll, men are still the primary breadwinners in most opposite sex families, and in that aspect, face unique challenges. How can we as a society better support them? Jason Resendez, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Caregiving, joins The Excerpt to dig into these issues.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, February 20th, 2025, and this is a special episode of the Excerpt.
With an aging baby boomer population, the demand for family caregivers in the US has never been higher. While traditionally, most family caregiving has fallen to women, men are now increasingly joining their ranks. Although both sexes face a financial, emotional and physical toll, men are still the primary breadwinners in most opposite-sex families and in that respect, face unique challenges. How can we as society better support them? Jason Resendez, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Caregiving is here to dig into these issues. Thanks for joining me, Jason.
Jason Resendez:
Thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
It's frequently an emergency or at least an unexpected change when someone becomes a family caregiver, which of course is a huge challenge when it needs to be balanced with a career and other family responsibilities. What do you hear from men who are caregivers, particularly when it comes to employment and careers?
Jason Resendez:
The simple fact is, you're right, there are more and more family caregivers being enrolled into care every year. In fact, between 2015 and 2020, the number of family caregivers jumped by over 10 million to around 53 million Americans providing ongoing, complex care in this country. But our perceptions of who those caregivers are have not kept up, and our policies and culture haven't kept up.
More men are becoming family caregivers
Men face a unique set of challenges when it comes to stepping into the role of a caregiver.
So while the majority of caregivers are still women, there's a large share of men that are providing care, about 39% or 20 million men are providing ongoing complex care for someone in their life. And that care looks a lot like the care that women provide. It's ongoing, intense, helping with activities of daily living, with managing medical and nursing tasks, helping with transportation and meal preparation.
So there's a lot of similarities, but where there are differences are the cultural differences that we see around caregiving, deeply ingrained assumptions around who caregivers are and what policies are in place to support them. So what we see and hear from male caregivers are similar to what we hear from women caregivers in terms of, we work in a system that doesn't recognize and value their care. There are too few policies in place to support family caregivers in the workplace, like paid family and medical leave. And as a result, over 60% of male caregivers feel burnout. And of those who are balancing both care and work, 70% face workforce disruption. So care is a lot harder than it needs to be or should be for both men and women.
Dana Taylor:
Emotional distress is one of the top problems that caregivers point to. Men and women typically handle this in different ways. How are men receiving support differently from women, or are they?
Jason Resendez:
There are fewer supports in place for male caregivers. And this goes back to the reality that our culture and policies are deeply ingrained with these gender-based assumptions around who caregivers are. So when we think about one of the key supports for family caregivers are peer support groups. Caregivers want to hear and engage with other caregivers. These peer support groups rarely are led by or include men. So there's a lot of issues with accessing gender-tailored care supports.
We also hear from men that about one in four feel that other folks don't trust them to provide safe and caring support just because they're men. So there's a bias against male caregivers because of these deeply ingrained assumptions around who caregivers are that lead to additional isolation and distress. And so it's up to us, up to employers, up to policymakers, up to service providers to consider this changing face of who caregivers are in America and think more about the role that men are playing in providing care as we develop tailored supports and policies.
Dana Taylor:
Why are so many family caregivers unpaid? Aren't there federal funds available to cover the expense?
Jason Resendez:
There is a huge demand for care in this country. As our nation ages, as folks experience and navigate disability and serious illness, and without formal care supports in place like a healthy and growing direct care workforce, the responsibility of care falls squarely on the shoulders of family caregivers. So it really is that lack of infrastructure that contributes to that demand and hardship placed on families to shoulder the responsibilities of care.
And during the COVID-19 pandemic, we did see an increase in states stepping up and leveraging Medicaid dollars and flexibilities to address the direct care workforce shortage, to recognize this growing hardship being placed on the shoulders of family caregivers, both men and women. And so introduced programs like expanded consumer direction, getting dollars in the pockets of family caregivers when they couldn't find a direct care worker because of the crisis that we were all in.
So there are more programs at the state level, but they're fragmented, they're underfunded. We're talking about major cuts to Medicaid right now, and those are some of the programs that'll be the first to go if Medicaid gets slashed. So there's just not enough investment in the family care support system that we need, and that impacts both men and women. And it's exactly why we need to recognize the role that men play, right? We need to recognize the shared responsibility that caregiving is and the shared contribution that caregivers provide to our communities, to our families, to our economy. And that means recognizing and building gender equity so that responsibility is more equitably shared.
Dana Taylor:
So in terms of federal funding, what would it take for that to change? Do you see it as even being a possibility?
Jason Resendez:
I think we are on the road to better recognizing and valuing the contributions of family caregivers. And what that will look like are investments in programs like paid family and medical leave that allow both men and women to provide care, whether it's for a newborn baby or for an aging or ill parent or a grandparent. It looks like stronger home and community-based supports and access to respite services to limit the disruption on workforce issues that both men and women face. It looks like better training through the Medicare program to take on these complex medical and nursing tasks that both men and women are facing.
And we're seeing some incremental progress. We're seeing more states pass paid family and medical leave policies at the state level that recognize both the work of men and women in providing care. We're seeing states like Washington state step up for and invest in long-term care insurance programs that'll benefit both men and women. And we're seeing states even introduce caregiver tax credits, right? We know that caregivers spend about $7,000 out of pocket every year in providing care, and that's not tax-deductible. And so we're seeing more states step up and recognize and address those out-of-pocket costs. So while the progress is moving towards incremental investments, we still need those larger, whole-scale investments at the federal level in order to make care more sustainable. And to recognize over $600 billion in value that caregivers provide to our economy each year without adequate support.
Dana Taylor:
The Trump administration made news recently announcing a plan to halt federal grant funding. That's now been temporarily paused by a judge, but if that does move forward, what would it mean for caregivers and their loved ones if these funds disappear?
Jason Resendez:
So it would be devastating to our nation's already crumbling care infrastructure from cuts to aging and older adult services in the form of respite care in the form of Older Americans Act. National family Caregiver support programs which provide resources to states to provide direct services to family caregivers, to cuts to the Medicaid program, which is the number one payer of long-term services and supports in this country, the number one payer of home and community-based supports in this country, which millions of Americans and their family caregivers rely on. So a freeze is extremely disruptive. Cuts would be extremely devastating to Americans, both men and women who are already having a hard time providing this essential care for people in their lives.
Dana Taylor:
We have technology and apps that are made with caregivers and patients in mind. Does that help fill the gap? And what's a problem that can be solved with specific tech that wasn't available in the past?
Jason Resendez:
Technology can play a really critical role in helping family caregivers navigate their new realities and their changing realities when it comes to caregiving. One of the biggest issues we see in caregiving, according to our data, caregiving in the US, is care coordination. We see care coordination becoming harder and harder for family caregivers as they navigate different services, different policies, different insurance policies, et cetera. And so technology plays a big role in helping families coordinate care, identify what resources and benefits they can access at the state and federal level. So technology I think is a really critical tool in the toolbox, but it's not enough. We need whole-scale investments in care at the federal level, from the private sector, from philanthropy to keep up with the demand of care in this country. But certainly, technology could play a role in helping to meet that demand.
Dana Taylor:
Jason, I'm sure you have a list, but what's the most urgent need for caregivers in general? If you could pick just one.
Jason Resendez:
I think one of the most critical things that we can do is to shift the paradigm from seeing and viewing care as an individual responsibility and struggle to a shared responsibility. And from that, I think we'll see greater recognition and value and political will to invest in policies like paid family and medical leave, home and community-based supports and tax credits to recognize and value the contributions of family caregivers.
Dana Taylor:
Caregiving is something that many of us may find in our lives, either being the person providing care, or accepting it. And Jason, I know that you have a personal experience here, as do I. Can you please share the challenges you faced?
Jason Resendez:
I grew up watching my mom raise three kids while working a full-time job and caring for my grandmother who battled multiple chronic conditions. And I didn't know it at the time, but she was one of America's 11 million sandwich caregivers, balancing care for an older loved one while also care for children. And that care came out of a deep sense of love and commitment for her family, but it also came with consequences. It meant that she was never able to finish her college education. It meant that she had to dip into her hard-earned savings in order to make moments like my college graduation possible for me and for her family. And that had ripple effects. It limited our opportunities as a family. It limited her opportunities and career development. It exacerbated deeply-ingrained gender inequities. And so it shaped my life and it shaped my perspective on the importance of valuing and advocating for the work of family caregivers.
Dana Taylor:
What do you think is the most important area to focus on for the people who want to fix this issue, to improve the lives of caregivers across the country?
Jason Resendez:
I think the most important thing to focus on is recognizing that caregiving is our common ground. It cuts across party lines, it cuts across age, it cuts across genders, and it's something that we all benefit from. Caregiving is the work that makes all other work possible. And so it's from that common ground that we can start investing in the policies and supports needed to value caregiving, to make caregiving more sustainable, more equitable, and more dignified.
Dana Taylor:
Jason, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Jason Resendez:
Thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance, our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [e-mail]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.