For many Asian and immigrant families, caregiving is a way of life, with generations living and caring for one another under the same roof as part of daily life. My Iranian grandparents lived in a multi-unit dwelling in Tehran, where they cared for each other through illness and aging, cooking and sharing meals with their children and grandchildren in what seemed to me a seamless synchronicity. When my Pakistani grandmother emigrated from Karachi to the U.K. in the 1970s, she moved in with my uncle’s family, sharing a bedroom with her youngest grandson until she died. Now, that grandson lives in the same house with his own children and aging parents.
However, here in the U.S., caregiving takes on a very different form, even for families raised on the belief that caring for another is simply what we do.