The Unexpected Caregiver: How Boomers Can Keep Mom & Dad Active, Safe and Independent
Forget Your Age, Act Your Smarts, Says Author
Kari Berit's New Book Offers Insight And Ideas As Boomers Become 'Unexpected Caregivers' For Their Parents
"They cringe when I say I'm 43," says Kari Berit. "Especially women. We're not supposed to admit
our age in this culture, let alone be comfortable doing so. And in public. And with a microphone,
so everybody can hear you!"
Which is the main reason Berit chooses to walk her own talk so, as she puts it, "age-assertively"
when speaking to business groups and doing seminars for caregivers, both professionals and family
members.
In her new book, The Unexpected Caregiver: How Boomers Can Keep Mom & Dad Active, Safe and
Independent (2007: Attainment Company, Verona, WI), the Red Wing, MN-based author and consultant
takes an uncommonly activist approach to dealing with aging issues, especially the sudden discovery
by many of her contemporaries that they're going to have to take on the role of caregivers for
their parents as they all grow older.
"People refer to boomers as the Sandwich Generation," Berit notes. "Kids on one side, parents on
the other - and we're caught in between."
Parenting children eventually ends, ideally in independent adults, and, someday perhaps,
grandchildren. But the idea of "parenting our parents" has taken millions of Boomers literally by surprise.
"No one told us we were going to have to do this," says Berit with mock outrage. "No one even
mentioned this could happen to us, let alone prepared us for what we might have to do about it."
Nonetheless, according to a recent study by Campbell-Ewald Health, as many as 13 million Baby
Boomers already are providing significant levels of care to their parents - and projections are that
as many as half the Boomer generation's 78 million members ultimately may have to.
"That's nearly 40 million 'unexpected caregivers' trying to figure out what hit them, and how it's
going to change their lives," says Berit. "This is no time to be acting squeamish about our age.
This is the time when we have to grow up and face up to our own mortality - or maybe I should say
maturity. And, for many of us, it's increasingly going to focus on learning to deal with what's
happening to our parents."
As Berit explains it, the very idea of aging pushes some uncomfortable buttons for Boomers, many
of whom grew up hearing their moms and dads constantly nag them to "act your age." In essence, that
meant act older and more responsibly than their parents might reasonably have expected, based only
on chronology.
But as they fought their way through adolescence to adulthood, the youth-oriented culture Boomers
spawned - and fueled with their unprecedented purchasing power - made age a dirty word. This,
after all, is the generation that warned each other, "Don't trust anyone over 30" - that rocked to the
beat of The Who's "My Generation," with its age-damning chorus, "Hope I die before I get old."
(Rock icon Pete Townshend, the lyric's author, turned 60 in 2005, by the way.)
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