Age-old cultural commitments impose gendered responsibility

The story of female caretakers’ lost years

She cradles the naked man from his ribbed underarms, lowering him into the water. The rusted faucet hinges as a thick stream fills the acrylic tub. Brittle joints fold over limbs until paritally submerged. She scrubs his thin back, marred with oblong blotches of sun and grime.

Halmeoni, my grandmother, is bound by an unspoken familial verse, sentenced timelessly to my halabeoji’s bedside. Alzheimer’s has hindered my grandfather’s independence and has in turn kept my halmeoni from leaving the house for long, let alone travel.

The shorter Halabeoji can walk, the shorter Halmeoni will walk. The less Halabeoji can eat, the less Halmeoni will eat. The longer Halabeoji sleeps, the longer Halmeoni will sleep. Their lives are inextricably parallel, limiting my strong, selfreliant halmeoni to the capabilities of the ill 85 year-old man.

She sacrifices her precious last years as a servant to her unwavering loyalty. A cultural shift in the gendered caretaking responsibility of many Asian cultures would bestow an unprecedented freedom upon my halmeoni, as well as many other female caregivers.

Authors of the 2015 study “Willingness to Use a Nursing Home in Asian Americans” explored factors associated with willingness to use a nursing home in Asian Americans. From the 2,553 participants in the Asian American Quality of Life Survey, only a 38 percent minority sample demonstrated willingness to use a nursing home. While this distribution does reveal a subtle bias against the use of institutionalized caretaking among Asian Americans, the common factors observed within those of greater willingness highlight the tradition’s true nature.

Higher odds for willingness were observed among those with longer years of residence in the US and lower levels of family solidarity. This distribution shows that the aversion from institutionalized caretaking is greater the more connected an Asian American is with their culture.

Halmeoni occasionally leaves the house to reconnect with her college friends from Korea, who also immigrated to the US. They reminisce about their lives back home—the sweeter air, the staccato tongue, the family they left behind. More than anything, the somber women long to return to their country.

Yet this inevitable cultural bond continues to coil within foreign soil. In my Korean family, the resilient, independent mothers, aunts, and grandmothers are always the caretakers.

But this account isn’t just a fundamentally Korean experience. The study “Through gendered lens: explaining Chinese caregivers' task performance and care reward,” suggests that Chinese caregiving is highly gendered, with women more likely to be unemployed and provide more personal care than men. Furthermore, it was concluded that Chinese cultural values played a significant role in sanctioning the caregiver role its gendered connotation.

From the frequent overlaps of Chinese and Korean culture I have experienced, I believe that these patterns of sexist implications exist among many other demographics. The non-familial distrust may extend to a common immigrant experience. Displaced in a foreign land, families may be prone to falling back on well established, yet archaic roles. Furthermore, while grappling with a newfound sense of marginalization, the caretaking of a vulnerable and reliant family member by an outside-of-family institution begs a daunting commitment.

While healing the wounds of an age-old cultural code will take time, we can still act to offset the burden of our families’ female

$40 Red Roses Bear from Build-A-Bear

$34 small bouquet of roses from Mollie Stone's caretakers.

Adult Day Health Care Centers (ADHCs)—caretaking institutions that provide a supervised community setting during the day for elderly—are a forgiving middleground for families who are hesitant about in-house caretaking or caretaking homes. One of which is SteppingStone, with four locations in San Francisco.

Founded in the 1983 Tenderloin, the organization serves as an alternative to nursing homes and institutionalization in which clients can remain in their homes and maintain more independence.

“SteppingStone provides the respite that caregivers need to live their lives and care for family and friends,” Jonathan Beavis, the outreach coordinator at SteppingStone, explained. “Participants—previously isolated from their community due to declining health—start to blossom and open up once they've transitioned into full-day center activities.”

For years I have watched my halmeoni’s blistered spirit gradually dwindle—the wisps of wrinkles slowly hardening, her walk turning to a shuffle, and the edges of the faucet rusting over. I mourn the many women whose melancholy narrative is etched into the frothing bathwater, grimesunken pores, and the bedside table.