I just really need to get this off my chest. Elderly DM has Alzheimer's plus one or two physical health issues, and lives with me and DH. I wfh 4 days a week and my health is poor (chronic pain/fatigue mainly, though there are other things in the mix). This means that I need to rest a lot and can't always predict how my health will be from day to day. Not to the point where my mum's health/safety are compromised - her care is never neglected - but enough that I'm not able to do it all myself. So my mum has carers for an hour morning and evening to get her up/to bed and help with personal care. I do everything else.
DM has had a raft of appointments recently, doctor/dentist/podiatrist. Pretty much all routine/recurring stuff but not always with clinicians I've met before. And time after time I am seeing a look of puzzlement (sometimes tinged with judgement) come over people's faces, both male and female, when I tell them that although my mum lives with me, paid carers handle her morning/evening routines, most of her daily personal care and provide additional companionship alongside the time DH and I spend with her.
There are myriad reasons for this - it's mainly down to my work/health and the fact that my conditions make me pretty useless in the evenings which is when she needs the most support (she suffers from sundowning, where I never seem to manage to reassure her very effectively but the carers are markedly more successful with this). But also partly that left to her own devices she won't wash/brush her teeth/take care of herself generally and I just don't have the mental or physical bandwidth to address this, nor the time on work days.
I've seen the puzzlement-tinged-with-mild-judgement look numerous times over the past couple of weeks and it's grinding my every last gear now. This has been going on ever since I first put the regular care in place, including from the carers themselves on occasions. I'm already carrying a lot of guilt for not doing it all myself, and this really doesn't help. Pretty sure I'm not imagining it either - I've seen it happen often enough now. I also see it from friends/acquaintances sometimes if the set-up happens to come up in conversation. Ditto if it ever comes up that DM has her own separate living accommodation within the houser (by mutual choice including DM's, so we're not living all on top of each other 24/7) meaning that I'm not with her every waking moment as people seem to think I should be.
And what really pisses me off about this is that I seriously doubt there would be any puzzlement/judgement in the mix at all if I was a man. In fact, I'd be applauded for the simple fact of having DM to live with me. It's so tiresome the expectations that are still placed around women in this area of life.
Just to give some backstory, I've been caring respectively for my dad (now sadly passed) and then my mum now since 2017, not always single-handed, but I've always been where the buck stops, so to speak. No siblings. No family where we live now. Due to some of my mum's problems worsening (mainly extreme passivity to the point where she won't tell me or the carers when she is in pain/unwell in any other way or needs practical assistance) I'm not even sure how much longer this arrangement is going to be practical/safe for her even with carers in the mix. I'm trying to keep her out of a home as long as possible because I honestly believe she would just decide to die - she is an extreme introvert with social anxiety who most of the time doesn't really seem to want people around her at all. Since losing my dad she doesn't really have much will to live, I sympathise deeply and do what I can do keep her spirits up, but nothing seems to help much. She swears blind she isn't depressed, I personally think she is very deeply depressed (and has been since my dad passed in 2019) but she flatly refuses any suggestion of this or any treatment for depression.
I know none of this is DM's fault, and I'm aware gendered assumptions are far from being my main problem here, but I'm only human, I'll be 60 in a couple of years, I'm not well and there is only so much more of this I'm physically going to be able to do. And yet people judge me as a woman for not doing it all.
Apologies for the rant but it's 2025 and this issue is really not helping my mental health, and I figure aspects of this might be relatable to some on this board. Is it just me who thinks I wouldn't be getting any of this if I was a man?