Daughter care

The care of an aging parent or spouse is more likely to fall on women, Stanford researchers say, jeopardizing their careers and costing their employers.

“Hard-fought gains toward equality in the workplace are at risk,” they wrote in JAMA Neurology May 8, 2017.

Unpaid family members provide 83 percent of the care for people with dementia, and two-thirds of the caregivers are women. Caring for a family member with dementia requires an average of 171 hours a month, they found.

Employers could help alleviate the caregiving strain through leave policies that support care for family members, say the article’s authors, Nicholas Bott, PsyD; Arnold Milstein, MD; and Clifford Sheckter, MD, of Stanford’s Clinical Excellence Research Center.