Unmet care needs exacerbate the struggle.

When we look at the population struggling with childcare and eldercare issues, all of those negative responses are elevated… more negative emotions, more concern for mental health, more worry about social collapse.

We dug deeper in the study, using LIS AgileBrain™ science, to understand the emotional impact on workers with unmet care needs. When we look at the correlates of this unmet care need, we see that several survey questions are significantly related, some predictably, others somewhat surprising. The mental health of friends and family is significantly related (r = .22); the physical health of friends and family is not. Concern over one’s own mental health also related significantly (r = .22); the concern for one’s physical health not. Said differently, in the midst of a raging pandemic, workers with childcare or eldercare challenges were more concerned with mental than physical health!

Two additional survey variables are related to this unmet need: concern with vulnerability to addiction (r = .18) and uncertainty about how long the situation will continue (r = .19). This finding harkens back to one of the jokes flying around social media early in the pandemic: “It’s the second day of home schooling. The kids are in detention, and the teacher has been fired for drinking on the job.”

Ultimately, better understanding should lead to better policy and program decisions. In short, can we predict outcomes. When we build a model including the survey predictors, we get a significant multiple correlation coefficient of .2742; which means that we are explaining about 7.5% of the unmet need for childcare or elder care. Knowing one’s concern for the mental health of themselves and friends and family along with their concern for a vulnerability to addiction and feelings of uncertainty start to explain the phenomenon. Interestingly, these survey questions start to touch on issues of mental health and feeling of uncertainty. When we bring in the AgileBrain™ science, we see a pattern of three dominant emotions with even stronger correlations than the traditional survey items: Safety (.36), Authenticity (.31), and Inclusion (.30). Having an unmet need for childcare or eldercare makes one worry about their own safety and the safety of their dependent(s). They feel both the positive emotion of providing care (safety) and the negative feelings related to threats to safety. They also have the need to express this as part of their authentic selves, who they are as an individual; the values and beliefs associated with the responsibility of caring for another is an important part of their identity (“I am a caring person”). Lastly, the emotion of inclusion suggests that these people feel some degree of isolation, a feeling of being trapped or isolated by these responsibilities. Warm feelings of belonging were not drivers.

When we build a model using these emotional predictors, we get a significant multiple correlation coefficient of .7899 (Note: that is big correlation!). While our survey questions were explaining 7.5% of the unmet need for childcare or elder care, emotions explain more than 62%. That’s more than 8 times the explanation power. What this means is that if we were to pursue any action to simply deal with the concern for one’ mental health or the mental health of others we would be missing substantial emotional concerns that have great importance in this situation. Assurances for mental health will not deal with the emotional concerns for safety, authenticity and inclusion. A more complete solution needs to address the feelings of safety, isolation, and identity. A primary intervention here might deal with the isolation by establishing support groups or other “connective” programming. A combined model including both survey questions and emotions yields a multiple correlation coefficient of .8141, explaining more than 66% of the unmet need for childcare or elder care. For completeness, we would use the full model, but there is little question where the predictive power lies. Trying to fully understand employees needs and design effective solutions is admirable but ineffective without considering their emotional/motivational needs and for the population with unmet child or elder care needs, even more problematic.