Re-entering the Workforce After Caring for an Aging Parent

Many workers are faced with child-care demands and at the other end of the life spectrum, caring for aging parents and often having to take time off or quit jobs to tend to their needs. It, of course, can be an energy-draining and time-consuming proposition to care for parents at the end of their lives, however morally proper and rewarding that may be emotionally.

And then, even after parents have often died, workers face a new shock: Some employers might wonder why you haven't been working for a year or more and all but sneer at the fact that you took time off to do the right thing, care for parents when they needed it most. How do you respond to that?

I am 50 and have 30 years experience working as an office administrator and bookkeeper. I had my last job for 20-plus years and resigned from it to relocate and assist in caring for an aging parent. My year-long tenure as care-giver is over and I have been looking for work for the past few months. Unfortunately, I have gotten very few nibbles.

At this point I am basically just trying to get my foot back in the work door. Several recruiters have said that my 'work lapse' of the past year is a red flag for many employers. What should I say when they question why I took time off to care for a parent?

Marna Hayden, who owns a human resources firm in Nazareth, Pa., has a simple answer to that question: "The truth."

"I don't see anything wrong with that," she says. "Lots of people take time off" to care for parents. "It used to be that it was always women who did that. But lately I've seen more men doing it, too."

She says it is possible that this applicant's lack of interviews may have as much to do with the recessionary economy as the fact that she took a year off to be a care-giver.

"It's never bothered me," she says of a gap in a work resume to care for an elder. "In most cases, the situation has come to some kind of a resolution. Either the parent has passed away or they're in a nursing home." And if not, she says the applicant likely needs to have resolved the on-going care needs for a mother or father before returning to work.

"The main thing is you need to let {an employer] know that you're available for work," she says, "to be able to say, 'The situation has changed now and I'm fully able to work.'"

Kenneth Bredemeier has six years of experience writing about the workplace. On the Job, a column addressing real worker questions about office relationships, corporate policies and workplace law, is written exclusively for washingtonpost.com.

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