Men Increasingly Provide Home Care For Family Members

The Los Angeles Times on Monday examined how both men and women "are playing a crucial role" in providing home care for seriously ill family members, contradicting the stereotype that "[d]utiful daughters and nurturing wives" dominate the role. Men account for more than 40% of the approximately 30 million individuals who provide home care for an ill family member for 20 hours per week, according to Peter Arno of the Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Among the nearly 16 million caregivers who also hold full-time jobs outside of the home, 52% are men, according to a study conducted this year by the MetLife Mature Market Institute and the National Alliance for Caregiving. According to the Times, "The big factor behind men's involvement may be the reality that women increasingly have job commitments of their own," while some men also "view such domestic labors more sympathetically than their fathers or grandfathers did in an earlier era" (Peterson, Los Angeles Times, 11/27).

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