Caregiving Is Work — We Just Don’t Treat It That Way

Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel

Careers, Business

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You shouldn’t have to choose between showing up for your job and showing up for your family and loved ones. Caregiving is a growing part of modern work life — and it’s largely invisible. In today’s episode of Hello Monday, host Jessi Hempel talks with Jennifer Levin, author of Generation Care, about what it means to care for others while juggling a career, and how we can better support caregivers at work and beyond. Jennifer began caregiving for her chronically ill father in her early thirties, long before her peers were navigating similar responsibilities. Struck by how few people were talking about it, she created Caregiver Collective, a Facebook group for Millennial and Gen X caregivers. Her new book, gives voice to a generation of caretakers, and confronts the increasingly urgent crisis of caretaking in the U.S. Jessi and Jennifer discuss: • The emotional toll of caregiving and why so many of us feel alone in it • Why caregiving should be treated as real, valuable work • How to support colleagues who are quietly balancing care responsibilities • Why policy change must recognize caregiving as core to the future of work • How managers and leaders can create cultures that acknowledge and support caregiving • The power of talking about caregiving — with friends, with employers, and in public This episode is for anyone who’s ever whispered, I’m sandwiching today. Whether you're deep in it now or likely to take on a caregiving role in the future, this conversation offers clarity, comfort, and community. Continue the conversation at Hello Monday Office Hours. Join Jessi and Senior Producer Sarah Storm this Wednesday at 3PM ET on the LinkedIn News page to talk about caregiving, trade-offs, and what support really looks like in today’s workplace.

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn News.
0:05.7	I was terrified.
0:07.7	Seeing my dad degenerating physically over that time and I'm across the country working.
0:13.4	I was the only person in my peer group I knew that was dealing with a similar experience.
0:18.9	I didn't know anybody my age that had dealt with chronic
0:22.3	illness in their immediate family, especially taking on the responsibility that I did. I thought,
0:27.5	statistically, I know other people. And statistically, this is affecting a lot of us. And we should be
0:33.1	talking about this. From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jesse Hempel and this is Hello Monday. It's our show
0:40.3	about the changing nature of work and how that work is changing all of us. So I want to start
0:47.1	by telling you about exactly one moment in my life last spring. I'd gotten a call that my mother
0:52.5	needed to have emergency heart surgery. She's fine,
0:55.6	don't worry. She's in her early 70s, and so I dropped everything and drove the three hours up to
1:00.4	where she lives to be there in the waiting room when she woke up. And I moved so quickly that I
1:05.7	forgot to organize pickup for my kindergartner who definitely needed someone at the school at the end of
1:10.4	the school day.
1:11.6	I was working that out on text from the hospital waiting room when I got a call for my producer
1:16.5	at Hello Monday. She had a totally normal question. We were able to figure it out really quickly,
1:22.0	but as I hung up the phone with Sarah, I thought, is this for real? Like, am I really doing this? Am I really trying to
1:29.8	figure out how to navigate my son's care, my mother's care, and my full-time job at the same time?
1:34.8	And nobody can see that I'm doing it because I'm doing it from my phone. Here's the thing.
1:40.9	That experience is so familiar, so familiar for all of us. Whether you are a person
1:46.7	who's in the middle of it right now, or whether you report to work every day with a whole
	...

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