Women are the Krazy Glue which helps keep the health care system from crashing.

They care for their children and spouses or significant others. They care for their elderly relatives. They come to the bedside of close friends with serious illnesses. They look after ill friends’ children or pets.

This is not to say that many men are not also contributing to the care of their parents, for example, but the vast majority of family-friend care-givers are females. This also means they are care-managers outside the home—-getting the patient to, through and back home from appointments and hospitalizations or through recoveries.

Any social trend which limits the amount of time women have to devote to the patients for whom they feel responsible will affect individuals and throw some sand into the gears of the creaky health care system we now have.

The story below is an excerpt from an interesting account about the effects of the recession on women who are at home—-either because they can afford to be or because they cannot afford child care that gets them out of the house.

It remains to be seen whether these are anecdotes or actually is a trend.

The New York Times

“The Great Recession is pushing many highly educated women who had left work to stay at home with their children to dive back into the labor pool, according to several nationally recognized experts on women in the workplace.”

…”Several studies have found that two different groups of women are likely not to return to work after giving birth: affluent ones and poor ones unable to afford child care.

“Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York, an independent research group, and several other economists and experts argue that there is an unmistakable trend toward women returning to the labor force — and not just professional women.

“Women are at a watershed moment,” Ms. Hewlett said, pointing to the recession’s squeeze on incomes.” (Emphasis added)

Source: New York Times, September 18, 2009