American Aging

May 17, 2006 @ 5:10 pm | Category: body, community, social justice

According to the San Francisco Chronicles aging baby boomers threaten to swell the number of Alzheimer’s patients needing long term care. The nation is facing a healthcare crisis which will only get worse. Having just recently placed my own mother who has Altzheimer’s in a nursing home I am very aware of the devastating affects of this disease and how bad nursing homes can be. People are so afraid of this disease and spending the rest of their lives in a nursing home some consider suicide a better alternative. For a generation who has easily accepted ending life at the beginning, prematurely ending it will be considered the prudent and reasonable thing to do. I am afraid of what my generation and their children will do with aging boomers suffering with Alzheimer’s or other age related disorders.

The only possible bright spot is a cure to stop Alzheimer’s before it destroys a mind. The other hope is for new ways to provide good compassionate care to an aging population. Families can’t do this alone no matter how much we talk about family values. In searching for a nursing home I was saddened to learn that most of them are run for profit. If the for profit model dominates in a community it either makes care unavailable to the poor segment of the population or compromises care for everyone.

Like orphanages, hospitals and educational institutions, homes for the aged should be a natural outreach of people of faith and operated as non-profit ventures. Historically the church has a great legacy in this. Maybe instead of building mega-chruch malls or buying grand organs we should be building places of compassion for the weakest and powerless among us. Otherwise people of faith will find that they have abandoned the culture to real despair and that the culture has rejected the hope Christians profess.

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Happy Mothers Returning to Work Day

May 13, 2006 @ 10:05 am | Category: gender/feminism, community, work

This story from NPR Marketplace about women trying to resume careers after a break to raise children illustrates how little the workplace has changed. Young women are being sold a bill of goods. While they pursue advanced degrees they are told that they can accomplish anything only to hit the career wall after becoming mothers. Women, like men, want to build families and contribute to the world. They do want to do it differently, but the workplace has not yet changed enough to accomodate the life cycle of women. Some women are creating alternatives by starting their own thing or joining other women to create the work environments that fit them. Work innovation may be the most effective and ultimalely change the way everyone works. This innovation is not, for the most part, coming from employers.

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