The Invisible Work of Caregiving—and Why It Feels Harder Than Ever

In Hamilton County, many families are balancing more than meets the eye. The invisible work of caregiving has always been there—but when the systems families rely on shift, it becomes harder to carry. 

It’s the list in your head: doctor’s appointments, grocery lists, practice schedules, carpool swaps, calendars you update three times before anyone notices.

It happens quietly.

It happens every day.

It’s the work that keeps people fed, on time, safe, and (mostly) afloat.

According to a 2025 national caregiving survey, about 63 million Americans—nearly one in four adults—provided unpaid care to a child or adult this year¹. That’s a 45% increase over the past decade, reflecting how much families are stepping in where systems don’t always make it easy.

In Indiana, nearly a quarter of adults—roughly 1.2 million Hoosiers—are family caregivers², giving their time and attention to parents, spouses, siblings, and loved ones without pay.

Some days, that work looks like feeding someone who can’t cook for themselves. Other days, it’s navigating phone menus, medication schedules, and insurance questions. Sometimes it’s just reminding someone to put on socks. And sometimes it’s the mental load—the constant background work of remembering that something needs to be remembered.

That’s true whether you’re caring for a child, an aging parent, an aunt, a grandparent, or someone who depends on you in ways others don’t see. And it’s true whether you do it every day or only in seasons.

We don’t talk much about this side of caregiving—the part that has to happen so everything else can happen. But a lot of that work lives in the head: the planning, tracking, anticipating, and remembering that never really turns off. Naming that mental load makes the work easier to see.

A lot of this work doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s shaped by the systems families rely on every day—childcare, healthcare, work schedules, and school calendars. In Indiana, many families have felt how quickly those systems can shift. Changes to childcare funding and eligibility over the past couple of years have left some families scrambling to find care, adjust work schedules, or make difficult tradeoffs.

For some, that means reworking careers or turning down opportunities. For others—especially single parents—it can mean having no real options at all. And underneath it all is the financial pressure: the cost of care, the cost of missed work, and the cost of stepping back when there aren’t other options.

Even with recent efforts to restore some of the supports the Republican led legislature took away, the day-to-day reality for many families still involves a lot of coordination, uncertainty, and figuring things out as they go.

Unlike laundry, school drop-off, or food prep, much caregiving happens without an audience. It’s ordinary. It’s repetitive. And because it’s as much a work of the head as it is of the hands, it’s easy to overlook.

So if this sounds familiar, we want you to know: we see you.

And we believe this kind of work should be recognized not just in moments like this, but in the decisions that shape everyday life in our community. When childcare access is unstable, when schedules don’t line up, when support systems are inconsistent, the burden doesn’t disappear—it shifts to families, and often to one person carrying more than their share.

That’s why conversations about childcare, healthcare, schools, and work flexibility matter. Not as abstract policy debates, but as real factors in whether families can stay afloat without constantly recalculating what has to give.

Families in Hamilton County are already doing the work. Public systems should make that work more manageable—not harder.

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Sources: ¹AARP & National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025; ² AARP Indiana, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025: State Data.