- By — Manushree Mahat
Abstract
Women bear the responsibility of caring for the elderly in-laws in many South Asian households, like those in India and Nepal. Caregiving and of itself is incredibly gendered – the very notion that married daughters-in-law are expected to live with the aged in-laws, while the sons don’t bear the responsibility of living in their homes, is patriarchal. What ensues after that is a never-ending emotional and physical burden for the women to care for their aged in-laws. In this article, the author explores how women’s elderly care work in households is entirely unrewarded, and how this physical, mental, and emotional burden is a larger part of a patriarchal institution that unfairly burdens women with looking after their husbands’ parents(more than they do), while men are not dealt with the same expectations.
Introduction
The population of elderly people in India has been projected to reach 17.32 crore by 2026. This is a significant growth, even more so, with more daughters-in-law who provide the majority of the care towards their elderly in-laws, according to research. This is an objectively fascinating revelation, to think that one’s own sons would feel less responsibility towards their parents, compared to the daughters-in-law, and is an example of patriarchy at its finest. Dual burden is a term used to refer to the joint responsibility of paid labour work and unpaid household and care work expected of women. Even when women in the family have a paid job, they’re still expected to do the household work, child and elderly care work, which makes caregiving extremely gendered, revealing how this burden seamlessly functions in a marital institution. It speaks for marriage as an institution of patriarchy, as any and all work associated with women in the family is unpaid work. The institution of marriage is patriarchal in itself, where women’s bodies are constantly regulated for reproduction under capitalism. Under marxist-feminist perspectives on marriage, we can discuss how men benefit from women’s unpaid labor, so that they can continue working for the capitalist economy outside, while capitalism incessantly exploits women’s labour. Elderly care work is an extension of this unpaid labour–one where daughters-in-law are expected to be the primary caregivers of their in-laws, even when a son is present.
In a patrilocal household, a woman is expected to carry all the physical, mental and emotional burdens of the marriage, even before the marriage itself. A woman marries and leaves her own parents, only to be taken care of by another man’s family, women are essentially viewed as sources of unpaid labour for men.
Elderly care work is no easy feat. Aged people often experience a slew of health problems, such as cardiovascular diseases and dementia. Most elderly caregivers experience mental health challenges themselves due to the harrowing and tiresome nature of the work. Caregiving itself is associated with psychological and mental stress, depression and anxiety. To know that the most significant impact of this is experienced by women is an example of how women are subjected to insurmountable stress every day. According to research, 90% of Alzheimer’s patients are cared for by women, showing the significance of women in elderly caregiving.
Patrilocality and its effects
Patrilocality can be defined as the marital structure where the newlywed couple lives with, or near, the new husband’s family. It, in essence, involves the woman leaving her family to live with her new husband’s family. This is an incredibly patriarchal structure, as mentioned before, as it gives the husband and his family inherent power over the woman’s autonomy and management of property. Patrilocality creates a structure where the woman has to be answerable to an entirely new set of people associated with her husband, who have significant influence on her mobility. The concept in itself is extremely misogynistic–why is it that the woman must leave her family, while the man doesn’t have to make these life-changing decisions instead? Why is she simply ‘expected’ to look after aged parents and family members of her husband, when the husband is fairly present in their lives?
Patrilocality sustains patriarchy. It shamelessly reinforces the idea of women as nurturers by expecting them to be caregivers of a new set of a man’s family. Women are actively socialized into caregiving roles since their childhood, which persists after marriage, when they have to ‘leave’ their childhood home into their ‘new’ marital home. Like Simone de Beauvoir has theorized, “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman”. In the context of patrilocality, we can observe how women are socialized early into the role of becoming a ‘good wife’ through differential socialization where girls are taught early to cook and clean, while the same is not expected of boys. The bargaining power in this kind of family is also significantly lowered, making women the victims of not just a patriarchal structure that has inherent power in the way lineage and property are distributed to support the paternal side, but also of constant caregiving that goes largely unrewarded.
The ‘Triple’ Burden
Research by Govil et.al, published on elderly care in India discusses the ‘triple’ burden a woman has to face in a family that includes paid work, household chores, and elderly care. This kind of burden is all-encompassing giving women no time to themselves, and endless work throughout the day. The male counterparts are somehow not included in the equation, neither when it comes to household work, nor elderly caregiving or childcare.
This triple burden takes a significant toll on a woman, exhaustion, stress, and sleeplessness, amongst others. A married woman’s life is essentially one of stress, owing to their job load coupled with the household chores expected of them. As mentioned above, elderly care is no easy task, there are paid nurses who look after elderly people experiencing health issues. Daughters-in-law mainly are pushed into this labour, where it becomes an ‘obligation’ for them to perform these roles, without expecting any financial returns or rewards in any form. It is merely expected of them, they are economically and emotionally deprived of any rewards for their labour.
Time. Poverty, and the Loss of Opportunities
A significant number of elderly caregivers have to take leave of absence and setbacks from their work because of the time they have to dedicate to caregiving. Women and daughters-in-law are the ones who often end up sacrificing their careers and any leisure that they might have to look after their aged family members. In this way, not only is their personal life jeopardized because of their inability to take any breaks for themselves, but they are forced to take a step back from their professional pursuits for the sake of the ‘family’. A mix of kinship obligations and emotional labour is used to justify this patriarchal treatment of women, which states that when one is a ‘family’, they will have to take care of their family members.
A woman’s and daughter-in-law’s work never stops. They may receive holidays from their work, but the labour of household chores and elderly care exists endlessly. Every Saturday and Sunday, they’d still have to wake up with the burden of looking after the house, the children, the husband, and the aged parents. Time for oneself is a faraway dream when elderly parents, whose needs would only grow as they age, have to be cared for solely by the woman herself.
Conclusion
The psychological and physical toll that unpaid labour brings on women is immense. Her physical and mental health is constantly on the line, while any and all times she can take for herself is nonexistent. Women have to sacrifice their mental well-being, professional opportunities, and finances in order to take care of the household, while their domestic labour is entirely unpaid. We can argue that the first step towards breaking the role of elderly care as unpaid labour is the elimination of the patrilocal structure. When a woman enters marriage in an inherently patriarchal structure, she is already bound by it. Marriage becomes a trap through which unpaid labour can be generated and recycled, instead of a loving and safe institution.
About the Author:
Manushree Mahat is an amateur writer based in Kathmandu. She has experience in culture, lifestyle, and social journalism, and also dabbles in fictional storytelling once in a while.
Image Source: https://feminisminindia.com/2017/09/04/unpaid-domestic-labour/