When you have a child, there’s a moment. A birth. A before and an after. You know exactly when you became a parent, and you knew, more or less, what you were signing up for.
Caregiving for a parent doesn’t work that way. It’s a grocery run that becomes a weekly one. A check-in call that becomes a daily visit. A ride to one appointment that turns into managing an entire medication list. There’s no ceremony, no clear line — just a slow accumulation until, somewhere in there, you’ve become something you never actually agreed to become. And most people never notice the crossing.
That’s the tension at the center of this week’s episode.
Hot take this week:
You can design the best caregiver interventions in the world, but they're always going to be defined how successful they are by how many people recognize themselves as caregivers.
This Saturday, August 29th, on Aging Together // Unfiltered
I’m Just Helping: The Identity Crisis Among Family Caregivers with Kunal Parikh, a physician-turned digital health strategist whose research on caregiver self-identification led to his TEDx talk, “Did You Know You Are a Caregiver?” He’s spent over seven years leading aging and caregiving initiatives that have reshaped how healthcare systems think about the people standing next to the patient—work that also earned him Queen’s University’s Award of Excellence for aging and caregiver research.
We got into why so many people who are doing all the work of caregiving never actually call themselves caregivers, and what that gap costs them.
Where Does the Line Actually Get Drawn?
If there’s no birth, no ceremony, no single moment, how would you even know when “helping out” turned into something else? Kunal points to the mismatch directly: caregiving compounds so gradually, alongside aging and chronic conditions, that most people can’t name the day it started. Maybe since forever. Maybe since the beginning of the relationship.
Who Gets to Skip the Identity Question Entirely?
Culture, gender, and family expectations all shape who reaches for the word “caregiver” and who spends years insisting they’re “just” a son, “just” a daughter. Kunal brings in a piece of research from care ethicist Joan Tronto that reframes the whole thing in ten words:
"Women tend to care for, men tend to care about."
It’s a small phrasing difference that turns out to carry a lot of weight: one relational, one at a distance.
Whose Job Is It to Catch This?
Kunal and I have both worked inside healthcare systems in different countries, and we landed on the same uncomfortable answer: nobody is really catching it, consistently, anywhere. He argues it needs a multi-focal fix — better identification at the actual points of contact with the system, paired with the slower work of shifting the cultural narrative around who “counts” as a caregiver.
If you caught Melissa’s episode back in Season 5, you’ll remember she didn’t recognize her own caregiving role until after her husband had already passed away. Kunal references her story directly in this conversation—worth revisiting before Saturday if you missed it the first time.
The caregiver takeaway
Kunal shared one small reframe that’s had an outsized effect in his own research: stop asking people “are you a caregiver?” and start asking “do you care for someone?” Swapping the noun for a verb makes people far more likely to say yes, and that yes is often the first real step toward getting support.
If you’ve been telling yourself you’re “just helping out,” it might be worth asking the question the other way.
The full conversation with Kunal Parikh drops tomorrow morning. Follow Aging Together Unfiltered wherever you listen so it lands straight in your feed.
Resources
- Family Caregiver Alliance – Provides education, advocacy, and support for caregivers, including online resources and local services.
- AARP Family Caregiving – Offers guides, financial planning advice, and community support for family caregivers.
- National Alliance for Caregiving – Provides research, policy updates, and support for caregivers managing both elder and child care responsibilities.
- Alzheimer’s Association – Offers resources, helplines, and support for those caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s or dementia.
- Caregiver Action Network – A nonprofit that provides peer support and resources for family caregivers.
- Kunal Parikh’s TEDx talk, “Did You Know You Are a Caregiver?“
Want more conversations like this one? Tune in to the Aging Together Unfiltered podcast, and follow along on Instagram and LinkedIn. If this resonated, share it with another caregiver who needs to read it.
At Aging Together, we’re dedicated to helping you navigate aging together — whether you’re an older adult planning ahead, a caregiver seeking support, or simply someone who wants to understand the aging process. I hope you’ll join us on this journey.