Ladies Don't Resent Caregiving. They Were Born For It.

In this episode of That's Not Very Ladylike, here's a fun little lie we've all been sold: that good women are just born for caregiving. That we step into it naturally, give endlessly, and never once wish we were anywhere else. Meanwhile she's crying in a parking lot, googling whether it makes her a terrible person to want her old life back. So which is it? 

In this episode I get into what's actually going on: why that resentment is information and not a character flaw, why the thing you keep calling guilt is almost always regret wearing a disguise, and how the chronic stress of caregiving keeps cortisol cranked, sleep wrecked, and your hormones in open revolt. It's not that you don't love them. It's that nobody ever told you what loving them this hard was allowed to cost. Let's talk about it.

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What is That's Not Very Ladylike?

That’s Not Very Ladylike is the podcast for every woman who was told to be polite, stay calm, or stop being so dramatic, meanwhile her hormones, boundaries, and sanity were quietly falling apart.

Hosted by Tracey Willingham, licensed social worker and the voice behind That Hormone Girl™, each episode starts with one rule: Ladies don’t…and then they do it anyway.

Together, we unpack the unspoken expectations, the emotional labor, the generational BS, and the hormone chaos modern women are carrying and we get honest about what it actually takes to feel like yourself again.

If you’re ready to question the rules, trust your body, and stop shrinking to make everyone else comfortable, you’re in the right place.

Tracey: 00:13

You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week, we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome to That's Not Very Ladylike. My name is Tracy Willingham and some of you may know me as That Hormone Girl. And today we are talking about ladies don't resent caregiving. They were born for it.

Tracey: 01:00

So today's rule is a sneaky one, right? Because it doesn't even sound like a rule. It sounds like a compliment. Hey, you know what? Caregiving is in your nature.

Tracey: 01:10

You don't even look at it like it's labor because you're not doing a job. You're just being a woman. That's what women do. And if it's in your nature, then you can't be tired of it. You definitely can't resent it, and you definitely cannot stop doing it.

Tracey: 01:28

The kids, the parents, the partner, the whole household running on your invisible operating system. But guess what? That's not work, ladies. That's love. Right?

Tracey: 01:39

That's what we're told. It's love. And love, apparently, it doesn't get to clock out. So today, we're going to look at what caregiving actually is. So let's get your tea, get your coffee, pull up a carpet square.

Tracey: 01:55

Remember those? That's probably just showing my age. I used to love when it was carpet square time back in elementary school because you know I love to tell a good story. And I've had a very full life, so I got plenty to share. And if you've listened to past episodes, you know this, but if you're new here, I'm a licensed social worker.

Tracey: 02:13

And for years, I did home visits for people who had been diagnosed with cancer, which means I sat in a lot of living rooms on a lot of very hard days asking people the questions that a lot of times nobody else thought to ask. And I want to tell you about two appointments. They were literally back to back on the same afternoon, And they have forever shaped my life and my career in what I learned that day. So the first woman, I asked her the standard intake question. Who's your support system?

Tracey: 02:45

Basically, who's helping you? Who's getting you to your appointments? How's that working for you? And she said, Oh, I've got a village. And let me tell you about my village.

Tracey: 02:54

And I said, Tell me about that village. I am excited. And she said, So my husband takes me to my appointments. And if he can't take me, then my boyfriend takes me. And if he can't take me, then my husband's girlfriend, she will come and take me to my appointments.

Tracey: 03:12

Now I'm gonna tell you, I did not see that coming on a Tuesday afternoon. I was I was not ready for that response. And I'm a professional, so I kept my face completely neutral. And I told her, You know what? I'm proud of you.

Tracey: 03:26

You've got a village. You're not kidding me. You've got a deeply unconventional, fully staffed, maybe somewhat confusing village, but it's a hell of a village. And whatever is working is working. And I mean it.

Tracey: 03:39

I meant it at that time. Like, what would happen if society came together like that for anything? So I was like, Hey, this isn't my place to say what's conventional, what's traditional. It's working, and I'm here for it. And then I went to my next appointment.

Tracey: 03:56

Different woman, same intake questions. But here's what her village looked like. She was taking care of her husband who had cancer. And I didn't know it until the visit, but I learned her mother also had cancer. And both of them were terminal.

Tracey: 04:18

She also had a father with early stage dementia and four children under the age of 12 at home. One woman holding it all together. So I started where we always start. Know, I was like, Okay, intake. Let's go.

Tracey: 04:36

Let's get it going. Resources, services, who can we get in here to help? And then I stopped myself. The moment just led me to look her in the eyes and I stopped myself and I asked her one question. I said, You know, we can get to these resources for your loved ones in just a minute.

Tracey: 04:53

But I think the question I need to ask instead is, what do you need today? And I'm not being dramatic when I say she fell to the ground, literally fell to the ground, and she sobbed right there on the floor. And she told me through her tears, no one had asked her that. She could not remember the last time somebody asked, What do you need? How are you?

Tracey: 05:21

Not one single person. But she did say, you know, everybody had plenty of words for her. And you all know this, if you've done some caregiving, you know this. She was being told things like, You are so strong. You are so brave.

Tracey: 05:36

You know what? You are a good daughter. What an amazing wife. And what she needed more than one more adjective thrown at her on the way out of the door was for somebody to stop and ask, How are you doing? And let's be honest, we could end the episode here.

Tracey: 05:58

Bam. Done. Mic drop. If you've been a caregiver, you already feel seen, you're like, Yes. We will call a woman every beautiful word in the language strong, selfless, a saint, specifically so that we never have to actually ask her if she's okay.

Tracey: 06:18

Because if we ask, you might have to help. So there's always a cost to all these rules of the ladylike. And you know me, I love data and I love numbers. So we're going in. So buckle up.

Tracey: 06:33

Here we go. I want to give you these numbers because they're staggering. Globally, women do about 76% of all unpaid care work. That's roughly three quarters of the entire thing. And in 2023, around seven forty eight million people were out of the paid workforce specifically because of unpaid care responsibilities.

Tracey: 07:05

Of those seven forty eight million, this isn't going to surprise you, but still sit down. Out of the seven forty eight million people, seven zero eight million were women. Only 40,000,000 were men. And let me tell you, when I say unpaid, I'm not talking about like, this is free. There's a lot of costs here, my friend.

Tracey: 07:28

It costs your body. Caregivers show higher rates of depression and anxiety. One analysis found caregivers were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health condition and put on antidepressants than the person who is actually sick. And spousal caregivers, the wife caring for a sick husband, are among the most prone to depression of anyone. So the woman on the floor in my story, her body was quietly keeping the tab the entire time everyone was busy calling her strong.

Tracey: 08:03

And that kind of bone deep depletion is the exact ground a lot of women are standing on when perimenopause shows up, already running on empty, before the hormones start to shift. So we got to look at this. We got to look at this, ladies. How deep does this go? What is the history and how did we get here?

Tracey: 08:29

And this is going to be the one that should make you furious. Now, we got the session coming up where I'm about to tell you what should make you a little pissed off. But we are not just more likely to do the caregiving. Men are actively excused from it. So, there's a study published in the journal Cancer that followed patients with serious diagnoses, cancer and MS for years.

Tracey: 08:56

When a man got sick, his marriage ended in separation or divorce about three percent of the time. Three. Y'all know what's coming, right? You're all like, come on. When the woman got sick, almost twenty one percent had their marriage end in separation or divorce.

Tracey: 09:18

She is roughly six times more likely to be left. And nearly nine out of the 10 of those breakups, the sick partner was the woman. So just let that sit for a second. A woman gets a life threatening diagnosis, and the statistically likely outcome is that the person who stood up and said, In sickness and in health, heads for the door. She stays and nurses him.

Tracey: 09:47

He leaves and gets a casserole dropped off and a whole lot of sympathy for how hard this must be on him. And we're not done. We're not done, my friends. There's actual research on a group of caregivers nobody even talks about, and that's the ex wives, right? Ex wives usually means you're excused, right?

Tracey: 10:09

Excused from anything dealing with this person. Divorced women coming back to take care of the very men they've divorced, it's happening because the kids need it, because no one else is going to step up, because she's the one who knows. And we will care give for a man that we have already left. That is how deep this historical training runs in women. And I wish it stopped at the bedside, but it does not.

Tracey: 10:40

We care give at the societal level too. Who organizes the meal train when someone's sick? Who's keeping the running mental list of which neighbor just had surgery and whose family is barely hanging on? Who shows up at the church, the school, the community meeting, and actually does the unglamorous work. In The US, women volunteer at higher rates than men.

Tracey: 11:06

And when you look at grassroots community organizing, the people who actually show up to fight for their own street, longtime organizers will tell you it is overwhelmingly women. Lay women are the literal backbone of most congregations. We stepped up in our neighborhoods and our faiths and our towns when somebody has to. Right at the moment, the men who could have simply don't. The real community movers are women.

Tracey: 11:42

I'm not apologizing and I'm not making it softer because it's the truth, ladies. We are not just running our households on unpaid labor. We are quietly running entire communities on it. And it has never been shared out fairly across women either. So we have got to talk about women of color and immigrant women have always done care work, their own families and everyone else's, often for wages that are in the poverty range while being told how noble they are.

Tracey: 12:19

So if this could be said out loud, what would it sound like? This is probably what you've heard from caregivers. I love them. And I am so tired I could cry. And you know what?

Tracey: 12:37

Both of those are true statements. I can't remember the last time someone asked how I was doing and actually waited for the answer. I'm not the default because I'm best at it. I'm the default because no one else will be. I resent it, not them, but I resent the fact that it was never actually a choice.

Tracey: 13:03

If I put it down, the whole thing falls, and I hate that I'm the only one who knows that. So now we're to my favorite segment. I warned you it was coming. This should piss you off because. This should piss you off because they took the hardest, most essential work in the entire human economy, and it was assigned to women at birth.

Tracey: 13:34

Then society refuses to pay for it, refuses to share it, and then hands you a fistful of adjectives instead of actual help. You know what doesn't help? You know what doesn't pay the bills? You know what doesn't help when maybe I need to rest for a little bit? You know what doesn't help at three a.

Tracey: 13:52

M. In the morning when I have a loved one who has dementia? It's not words like strong, saint, I don't know how you do it. That doesn't help me do one damn thing. And here's the dirty little secret buried inside those compliments.

Tracey: 14:10

Every single one of them is designed to keep you doing it. You're so strong means so I don't have to step in. You are a saint means this is your job, but not mine. They praise the caregiving precisely so they never have to share the caregiving. And the cruelest part of all, When a woman is the one who gets sick, the people who are supposed to care for her are most statistically likely to walk away.

Tracey: 14:42

We are expected to be the caregiver, And we are the least likely to ever receive one. And that is not love. That is a setup. So most of you probably already are like, That's me. I know I'm a caregiver.

Tracey: 14:58

But just in case, how do you know if this is you? Because sometimes things sneak up on us. You know every person's schedule, medication, diet, and emotional weather, and not one of them knows yours. You genuinely can't remember the last time someone asked you how you were doing and waited for the real answer. You've fantasized about a minor hospital stay purely to be off duty for even just forty eight hours.

Tracey: 15:29

You're feeling guilty because you're listening to this and you're like, Hell yeah, that's me. And then you feel bad. And you're already arguing in your head that your situation is different, that they really do need you. So let's look at the reflection. How do you take care of yourselves this week, especially if this is you?

Tracey: 15:49

And this is what I want to leave you with this week. And I already know it's going to feel illegal to some of you. Some of you will be like, Tracy, I don't know, but we're doing this together. We're going for the unladylike because it has to happen. Not everyone has earned the right to have you as their caregiver.

Tracey: 16:11

Okay? I'm going to say it one more time. Not everyone has earned the right to have you as their caregiver. And I don't care if it's your parent. I don't care if it's your partner, your friend, your children.

Tracey: 16:27

Being related to you or having married you or having raised you does not automatically entitle someone to your body breaking down in service of theirs. I want us to acknowledge that care is sacred labor, but it is not a debt that you owe to everyone who happens to share your last name or address or zip code or common hobby or whatever. Some people have spent your entire life taking and have never once asked what you need, and you are allowed to let that inform exactly how much of yourself you pour back into them. That is not cold, it is not unkind, and it is not unladylike. What that is is a grown woman deciding where her finite, precious energy gets to go.

Tracey: 17:31

So the smaller, harder practice for this week. I want you to do for yourself the one thing almost nobody does for the woman holding everyone else up. I want you to ask the question that I asked the woman on the floor. Not what does everyone need from you, what do you need today? And then please, just for the good of society, try to actually answer it.

Tracey: 18:08

Whatever you say you need today, even 10% of whatever it is, giving that to yourself. You got to start small. I don't want you to stop at 10%, but just start small. Because admitting that the love is real and the labor is real and the deal was never fair, deciding that not everyone has earned you and asking what you need for once, while it sounds selfish, while it sounds ungrateful, while it sounds like you are not that loving, caring woman, it is the best thing you can do to stay healthy, to stay mentally sound, and to have a life that is not a burden. And that's the most unladylike thing of all.

Tracey: 19:21

Thanks for joining me today for That's Not Very Ladylike. If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice. And help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at that hormone girl. And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.