We are still very much in the era where caring for old people is considered a dreadful task worthy of pity. There is no “You’re doing great, Mama” discourse on Facebook for those who care for elders. And perhaps most important, elder care doesn’t have as many jokes. But elder care doesn’t have the benefit of being “the best job in the world,” or being cute, for that matter. Child care is hard in a lot of the same ways elder care is hard - there’s lots of room for personal baggage, interpersonal resentment, guilt, and (yes) anger. The elder crisis looms like a way-worse child-care crisis. Hopefully we’ll spend more time hanging out intergenerationally without making it corny. Perhaps older people will start working in child care alongside the younger people who typically do that work. What could that look like? It may mean adjusting to the pace of an older workforce, learning patience as people take longer to move around. The need to care for the growing number of old people is going to require our society to reorient itself toward the elderly. history, there will be more people over 65 than under 18, and that gap will widen thereafter. America has always self-identified as a youthful culture, so what happens when so much of the population gets old? A recent piece by the New York Times editorial board laid it out in black and white: By 2034, for the first time in U.S.
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