If you are a woman over the age of 40, you need to read the new book, The Daughter Trap!  No matter how informed and proactive we believe ourselves to be, there is one certainty.  None of us are prepared for the nitty-gritty realities of our parents aging.

The Daughter Trap explores the impact of eldercare falling on the daughter.  I like the way the book is broken into 2 sections, “The Problem” and “The Solution”, offering examples and scenarios, but also resources, insight and a call to action.

Laurel Kennedy, author of The Daughter Trap: Taking Care of Mom, Dad... And You, explains why women are the ones to assume the responsibility of caring for elder parents, and how daughters can get their siblings to help!

Commitment Now.com: In The Daughter Trap, you reveal a disturbing truth, which is that regardless of how many husbands and siblings factor into the equation, it is almost always the daughter who gets handed the primary role in taking care of aging parents.  What inspired you to write a book about this phenomenon?

Laurel Kennedy: It was my personal experience that inspired me to write this book, although I didn’t have most of the sibling issues.  I wrote it for my friends – and discovered that this is a core and visceral issue to which most people can immediately relate.

There's no denying it. In any household with more than one child, kids seem to naturally compete for their mother's love and attention. And mothers swear they love every child equally.
But just maybe Mom does really love you best. Or is it just wishful thinking that you're her favorite?

"Mothers worry about that issue of 'Am I closer to one than I am to the other?' " says Cate Dooley, a psychologist with the Wellesley Centers for Women in Wellesley, Mass. "Mothers really need to let themselves off the hook. You're going to have different relationships with each child. It's OK."

Silver Anvil and National Telly Award winner Kennedy presents a razor-sharp tome on the impending national crisis in elder care. If you think her argument that "elder care is perceived to be a daughter’s obligation" is just an assumption, consider the statistic that "women lose an average of 11.5 working years because of caregiving responsibilities; men just 1.3 years." There is no doubt that her cries for a revolution are justified and that the timeframe is urgent (the over-65 population is growing nearly four times faster than the under-65 group). Covering everything from statistics regarding the state of care now to the gender gap in caregiving, this book is intended to scare most of us with aging parents into action. Recommended for absolutely anyone with a mom or a dad.

Practical and passionate, “The Daughter Trap” is a compendium of all things related to caring for aging parents. The passion comes from Laurel Kennedy’s conviction that both daughters and daughters-in-law, even with full-time jobs and children still at home, are expected to take on an undue amount of the hands-on work connected with caring for elderly parents, while sons are most often expected just to help with financial and planning matters. Her rallying call to baby boomers is that we need a revolution now in elder care, similar to what was accomplished for childcare in the 1960s.

When Amy Oglesby moved back to Salt Lake City two years ago to help care for her aging father, she knew it would be a difficult journey.

What she didn't expect was the staggering pressure and the sudden polarization she would face from family members after her dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Will your parent's dementia drive you crazy?

An excerpt from "The Daughter Trap: Taking Care of Mom and Dad...and You (St. Martin's Press, 2010), by Laurel Kennedy

"If you're caring for an elderly parent, you're living The Daughter Trap-the life we fall into when parents require our help, and everyone else expects it.... Elder care represents one of the most demanding-and rewarding-stages of life. Embrace it, and take advantage of every new breakthrough, from telemedicine to virtual villages, that will change the face of aging in years to come."

As written in Kennedy’s book “The Daughter Trap: Taking Care of Mom and Dad…and You”. Kennedy addresses the issues and offers solutions in her easy to read and follow no nonsense approach to the steps you can take as well as the steps our communities need to take to care for seniors who can no longer care for themselves. Add to the mix her extraordinary insightful and unique storytelling ability, you will find this is the only book you need to read on care giving. You also will be sending copies to your friends.

I just finished reading The Daughter Trap by Laurel Kennedy, and I must say that everyone who has a living parent needs to read this book!

The fact is that all of us with a living parent or two are going to face the caregiving question of “who is going to care for Mom or Dad?”  Odds are great that the obligation will fall to the daughter whether she wants it or not.  Ms. Kennedy does an awesome job of explaining why this is so.  She also tackles the questions of why society does not embrace elder care like we embrace child care;  what employers can do to ease the burden on employees who are caring for an elder parent;  and other interesting issues that rise to the surface for those caring for aging parents.