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Working Daughter: A Guide to Care for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living is my story of caring for my parents while trying to hang on to my career and raise my kids, the lessons I learned, and the advice I have to share. I wrote this book as a roadmap for other women, and men, trying to navigate caring for aging parents and their careers. Inside you will find straight talk and real advice about the challenges, and the upside, to eldercare. O
Have a book club? Download the discussion guide HERE.
Aiming her words at the many women in the sandwich generation, O’Donnell (Mogul, Mom & Maid: The Balancing Act of the Modern Woman) presents a blueprint for managing a career, children, and aging parents. She applies her own experience and that of others to talk plainly about the challenges of eldercare, the choices to be made, the aspects of caregiving that can and cannot be controlled, and the upside to caring for an aging parent. O’Donnell further considers common issues such as setting boundaries, caregiving with siblings, managing disruptions, and practicing self-care. VERDICT This book provides much-needed support for the growing population of women caregivers. Highly recommended for both public and personal collections.
— Library Journal, Starred Review
Drawing from her own raw experience caring for her aging parents while juggling young children and working as her family breadwinner, in Working Daughter Liz O’Donnell offers hard-won lessons on dealing with shame, guilt and unrealistic expectations, as well as how to navigate the complex, confusing and woefully inadequate elder care system in America. A welcome and practical guide to anyone struggling to honor and care for aging loved ones while seeking to live their own lives fully.
— Brigid Schulte, award-winning journalist, author of the New York Times bestselling “Overwhelmed: Work, Love & Play when No One has the Time,” and director of The Better Life Lab at New America
Liz O’Donnell is a woman who knows how to write, how to be brutally honest, how to tell caregivers’ unique stories, and how tell a bigger story about the new normal we’re all experiencing as our parents live so much longer than any generation before now. I love this book so much. It’s required reading for every grown-up with a loved one to care for. Heck, it’s just required reading about modern American life.
— Anne Tumlinson, National aging expert, and founder of Daughterhood.org, a community of caregivers
I told Jana Panarites from the Agewyz podcast all about the book. Listen here:
