Double whammy - using technology to help meet elder-care responsibilities - Workstyles - Column

Home Office Computing, May, 1994 by Nick Sullivan

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, when the spirit moves me and my friend toots his horn loud enough, I get out of bed for an early morning run. We terminate such athletic festivities at his mother's house, so he can "check in on mother" before he heads back to his house to start the workday. His mother's an octogenarian in good health who lives independently but certainly depends on a host of nearby relatives and neighbors to keep an eye on her.

In Norman Rockwell's America, this kind of close-knit family living was the norm. In Gary Trudeau's America, the extended family has long since fragmented, and few people have the time or ability to care for their parents as much as their parents cared for them. But the tide may be turning.

For all the reasons given for working from home, caring for elderly parents and relatives ranks low on the list. Long-term degenerative diseases and dying are not pleasant topics, and they're certainly not what people think about when making what is often a choice for a more independent lifestyle or for more lucrative work. In addition, most adult children don't even live near enough to their parents to make such a choice viable. But it's clear that as the population ages and lives longer, more people will use the flexibility afforded by today's technologies to continue working while they care for aging parents, even if they have to travel often and unexpectedly.

(See "Just Like New York," April 1994, page 4, publisher Hugh Roome's account of such high-tech nomadism.)

Some will rely on their computers and modems at home to work nights and weekends in the midst of an elder-care crisis. Others will carry notebooks, pagers, and cellular phones to hospital waiting rooms or bedsides, and use such phone services as call forwarding, selective call forwarding, and caller ID to screen out frivolous calls. A few may even quit their jobs to start home businesses--if their employers aren't flexible enough to give them time off. No doubt you've heard of or know people in one or more of these categories.

Of course, companies with more than 50 employees must abide by the Family Leave Act, which requires that such firms allow workers up to 12 weeks unpaid leave to care for a sick parent or child. But that relatively new law hasn't really been tested under fire yet. Besides, how many people can afford to take off that much time without pay?

"In the coming years elder care will have a greater impact on the workplace than child care or any other work-family issue so far," says Sally Coberly, aging director at the Washington Business Group on Health. "As baby boomers move deeper into middle age, the need for elder-care services will simply explode."

Indeed, about 15 percent of the population has elder-care responsibilities today, according to Work/Family Directions Inc., a Boston-based consulting firm. In three to four years, that figure will rise to 22 percent. Many of those with elderly parents are also parents themselves--part of the so-called Sandwich Generation. That is, they are saddled with dual responsibilities. Of the two, elder care is clearly the more onerous task.

Unlike child-care arrangements, which can be made in advance with some degree of predictability, the need for elder care often arises out of nowhere. A late-night fall, a cooking burn, a stroke--any one can release a flood of emotions and spark a scramble for medical attention. The situation can turn out to be just a fleeting scare or the beginning of a long period of uncertainty that demands assisted-care living or a nursing home. In either case, making arrangements is time consuming, and children often can't emotionally or morally entrust others with the task.

Although working from home, either part-time or full-time, is certainly no substitute for true elder care, any more than it's substitute for child care, using the technology that affords the flexibility to travel and work from anywhere may be the only way for busy middle-aged parents and children (suddenly they are both) to deal with their dual responsibilities in a dignified fashion.