Coming Soon…The Daughter Trap by Laurel Kennedy
due out in 2010 from St. Martin’s Press.

Who do aging parents call when they need help?
Who worries about their state of mind?
Who checks up on their medical check-ups?
Who maintains their household?

For the vast majority of women, the answer is –you!

Overworked, overbooked, overstressed and underappreciated, caregiving women need help and they need it now! Caught between the competing demands of frail parents, boomerang grads, a working spouse, school-aged kids, and a full-time career, women are being taxed to their physical and emotional limits.

The Daughter Trap tells it like it is: women get stuck in the caregiver role—whether they like it or not; whether they’re prepared for it or not; whether they want it or not. The Daughter Trap will explain why this happens, why women let it happen, and why that’s probably a good thing. Women need to unite and do for elder care in the 21st century, what they did for child care in the 20th. Come up with private sector solutions that are innovative, effective, accessible and affordable.

Based on hundreds of personal interviews, The Daughter Trap gives voice to the trials, tribulations and tender moments of eldercare, and outlines what individuals, employers, medical and social systems can do to alleviate the pressures of caring for elderly relatives.

Learn more about
Families of choice—adopting an elder, recruiting a support system
Naturally-occurring retirement communities-- that function as virtual villages providing low-cost care, support services and a social outlet
Sibling rivalry—how to get past childhood roles and resolve conflicts
Enabling technology—to compensate for physical and mental deficits
Lifestage planning—more than just money; the goals and values that make life worth living

Meet the author
LAUREL KENNEDY has experienced the “daughter trap” first hand, caring for a mother with dementia and her 90+ year-old father. As founder of the thinking firm called Age Lessons, Kennedy has become an acknowledged authority on multi-generational issues and an advocate for mature consumers. Kennedy is a popular interview and presenter, appearing on national television and radio programs, as an expert witness in the Superior Courts, and as a keynote speaker before numerous industry and corporate forums. She holds an MBA with honors from the world renown University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and currently resides in Chicago.

--Dr. William Thomas, Geriatrician; Founder, The Eden Alternative; Founder The Green House Project; Professor of Aging Studies, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County

"The Daughter Trap says something new and important about aging, family and caregiving in America today. Laurel Kennedy does for caregiving what Betty Friedan did for marriage and motherhood: She demystifies caregiving, and explains why there is a shift from "Daughter Track," to "Daughter Trap”. Kennedy locates caregiving in a larger context of social roles, sibling rivalries, and the increasing cost of health-care. The Daughter Trap explains when and why it is daughters who end-up caring for their aging parents; and how changes in marriage and family structure -- the decline in number of siblings, the increased divorce rate, and the coming of step-families -- is actually intensifying pressures on married women to be caregivers. I came away from Kennedy's book appreciating that the same society which gives us "Mother's Day" also pushes many women into "The Daughter Trap".



--Jeffrey P. Rosenfeld, Ph.D., Director, Hofstra University Gerontology Program



 
Exceptionally well-researched and extraordinarily well-written, Laurel Kennedy’s The Daughter Trap opens and defines the discussion on one of the most important issues of the decade. Every person on the planet should read this book! Every one of us was born of parents who need help as they age. What we discover, is the shocking lack of infrastructure to support caregiving. Unless we do something about it now, we too will find ourselves inhabiting decades of disability, dependent on the kindness of our adult kids. Businesses should read this book to learn about the many opportunities to create and profit from products that address the financial, emotional and backbreakingly physical demands of caregiving.

--Marti Barletta, Author, Prime Time Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds and Business of Boomer Big Spenders; and Marketing to Women: How to Increase Your Share of the World’s Largest Market

“The Daughter Trap will prove invaluable as we accept our responsibility to create a high quality of life for our later years. First: learn about the traps of today’s mainstream approaches that so rarely meet our real needs. Second: consider the hopeful, positive alternatives introduced by this book. Third: take action—help create new options for you and your family. We need to age in community. We need choices like senior and multi-generational cohousing, places where we can truly grow and age well.”

--Craig Ragland, Executive Director, Cohousing Association of the United States

“The health care dialogue in America has shortchanged the single biggest challenge on the horizon—elder care. Keeping our elders healthy and active requires a holistic approach to wellness that addresses the physical, psychological and social aspects of aging and the impact on the entire family unit. Caring for aging bodies requires specialized training and diagnostic skills that sit outside the standard medical curriculum. The Daughter Trap takes on the medical establishment and calls for a revamping of medical education to incentivize physicians to pursue geriatrics as a specialty and to ensure that all physicians are exposed to the fundamentals as part of a required course of study.”

--Robert N. Butler, M.D., President and CEO of the International Longevity Center, Founding Director of the National Institute on Aging and the Department of Geriatrics at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine


“Laurel Kennedy has the guts to tell us the straight story – that women are tasked with the often-overwhelming responsibility of elder care. The Daughter Trap shows why and how this has happened, and the economic and emotional toll this takes on our society.”

--Joan Toth, Executive Director, Network of Executive Women

“Laurel Kennedy sounds the gong about the ‘caregiving squeeze’ we face today—as the need for eldercare rises, the ability of family members and government to provide it diminishes. Urging caregivers of adults to stop suffering in silence, Kennedy calls for consciousness-raising, a movement, a spokesperson to carry the flag.  There are many of us; we must band together! We need men in on the act too, as they face caregiving responsibilities today due to increased numbers of employed wives and sisters.”

--Dr. Jacquelyn James, Research Director, Sloan Center on Aging and Work, Boston College

“Helpful and hopeful. Whether it’s a virtual community, an intergenerational housing development or a retrofitted family home, The Daughter Trap offers new ideas that are reshaping where and how we live in community as we age. Laurel Kennedy understands that we are ultimately stronger together.  The Daughter Trap covers the complexity and compassion of caregiving.”

--Donna Butts, Executive Director, Generations United

“This is a wise and important book. As a daughter who was once thrown off track, getting caught in the caregiver ‘trap’, I urge daughters and other family members to read Laurel Kennedy’s new book. We’re in a time of middle-aged children with aging parents who need to re-evaluate available services and re-assess family roles.”

--Connie Goldman, Author, The Gifts of Caregiving—Stories of Hardship, Hope and Healing
 

 
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