“Precarity means living in a state of insecurity, worry or stress; it means there is no back-up plan.” Former nurse Louise Ihlein shared these words with the Guardian this week, in a story about how taking time off to care for children had left her in a state of financial insecurity in her 60s.
The story prompted hundreds of responses from readers, many with similar stories of having no financial support as they got older, despite dedicating years of their lives to caring for others.
Here are some of their stories*.
I am 47. Worked in finance earning good money [until] I was 33. Had a baby, wanting to be there for her, didn’t return to my career. Did childminding as a way to earn some income but still be around as “mummy”. Husband still ran his business and his work situation didn’t change at all of course!
Split up from husband. Met a new partner, had a second baby at 37. She is disabled and requires [24-hour] care. Had to give up childminding so no income. New partner bailed out, haven’t seen him in years. I care for the second baby (now 9 years old) between 90-120 hours per week.
I have no money, no pension, no savings. I rely solely on the state. I am very grateful to have a council-funded roof over my head. But I worry about the future.
Eventually my daughter will have to go into a care home. I can’t care for her forever. I will have spent decades providing care for others and saving the government millions by being an at-home carer and I’ll have nothing at the end of it.
We joke that I will live in a caravan on my eldest daughter’s driveway. But really – it’s no joke. This will be my reality. And my payback for years of service.
Now 60, I find it very difficult to reenter the paid workforce after staying at home caring for three children and moving between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne for my husband’s career. Despite a technical certificate, Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees I was unsuccessful for many jobs and finally secured a part-time job using my technical certificate skills in a school, which I never applied for – just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Due to health issues since my 50s, working full-time would be too difficult for me. Thankfully, I am very financially secure due to my husband and my superannuation I accrued in a professional public servant role I had before I had children. Now my children are all university educated, well-adjusted and contributing to society and I feel proud that my hands-on parenting had a part to play in their success. However, my life could have been so different if I didn’t have the good luck I have had.
The issues being brought here only go to show that the best way forward is some sort of adequate universal basic income that is paid to everyone without exception.
Some people say the cost would be “prohibitive” but if you count up all the money spent on supposedly targeted welfare to those living in poverty, tax breaks for housing investments and other middle class welfare, as well as tax breaks for the rich and certain fossil fuel companies who pay no tax at all as well, as all that welfare outsourcing and training then, it might be a better option. It would certainly be a lot simpler, done through the tax office and get rid of a lot of red tape.
Then the “necessity” to judge others might actually wane and the social fabric of this country may be able to be repaired.
Then we might be able to be proud of who we are as a society.
I had a very upsetting conversation with someone I thought was a friend a few months ago. I’ve had some life derailments and expressed concern about facing a future as the author describes. My “friend” went on and on and on about how much better off financially she is than I am, because she married a man with family wealth and property. Even after I said twice that such comments are hard for me to hear, she kept this up.
The lack of empathy was staggering. Just as the author has experienced, and as some of the comments here show. If you didn’t plan your life perfectly starting in your 20s (because of course it was possible to predict in the 1980s what the 2010s and beyond would be like), then too bad. You get poverty and homelessness and despair, and a poke in the eye if you talk about it.
So many older women are being left to rot in poverty by precisely the same system that urged them to stay at home to look after the children (especially the Howard government policies which encouraged child-bearing and rearing for women).
The pattern of men leaving their wives and taking a bigger chunk of what should be shared wealth persists for the generation of women who had the children and worked part-time. Now like Louise, they struggle to meet the requirements of a punitive, suspicious and mean “welfare” system and eke out their existence in constant fear of a crisis sending them over the edge.
For those who don’t own their own home it is even worse. The system needs a lot of refining so that women in Louise’s circumstance are not treated the same as the stereotype of the work-shy youngster sitting at home on their couch nursing a [gaming] console.
* Stories have been edited for clarity.
