The way our society now cares for children and the elderly needs to be reexamined. Even in families where people want to be full-time care givers, there is such a focus on money that even when we are living well, we are trained to believe that we are not earning/having/doing enough.
I'll take my family situation for example. In an ideal world I would be a full-time home caregiver. I'd still be a foster/ adoptive/bio parent, but I'd probably also have my grandma come live with us and someday my parents as well. However, at this stage in the game, that is just not possible. We can get by without me working outside the home while I am in school thanks to scholarships and tax credits, but we don't have money for big vacations or other large purchases and we don't have money to buy a larger house. I feel very frustrated about the fact that my grandma can spend literally thousands of dollars per month living at a nursing home, we can spend hundreds of dollars on childcare, but if I took on the job of full time care giver I wouldn't get to have any of that money. (As a foster parent you are paid a set stipend, you don't get extra for providing "childcare" even though care will be paid for to other licensed providers if the foster parents work or attend school) It is a frustrating system and I wish our society would place a greater value on the role of care giving. It is essential, it is exorbitantly expensive the way we have things set up and we could be doing this all different. I'm sure there are people more knowledgeable than myself who could present a workable plan for providing monetary compensation to people who take care of their family members in a way that would be both efficient and fair.
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