Who will care for us in the future? Watch out for the rise of the robots The Observer, Sunday 6 March 2016

I’ve coined the term the “transition generation” for those women born in the 1950-75 period who grew up with a strongly gendered care ethic – we were usually raised by full-time mothers – and who rejected its constraints to pursue careers and paid jobs. The story of our working lives has been dominated by the attempts to conceal the gaps between the ideal of care we grew up with and the demands of our working lives. It’s the race from meeting to school pick-up; the struggle to care for a sick child during a busy day at work. Members of the transition generation were determined to break into male-dominated careers, to prove they could do it. Speaking for myself, I stumbled into motherhood and was bewildered at the shift of gears, the volte-face required to reorient myself, my values and my way of life into being a carer of small children. The compromises and shortcomings along the way have proved for many a constant source of anxiety and guilt; it’s telling that the 2012 article by the US government adviser Anne-Marie Slaughter on her own anguished decision to step down to look after her teenage sons became the most read article ever on the Atlantic magazine’s website. The transition generation has an intense curiosity about how others have navigated this dramatic era of social change in the lives of women. It’s striking that Slaughter’s conclusion – calling for recognition “that caregiving is a vital human activity” – should appear so compelling, even original. It’s as if we had forgotten something and needed reminding of it. It’s a struggle to clear the space in public debate in which to affirm and value the care ethic and thus to justify the appropriate resources – support for informal care, pay, recognition, training in paid caring. This plays out daily in public services where care has a central place, such as social care and the health service. For women (who still make up the vast bulk of those in care work such as nursing and social care) the underinvestment in care has been a double whammy, hitting them both at work and at home. Now the transition generation is stumbling into a crisis of care. The ageing demographic is increasing the need for care, and yet public provision is contracting, and the result is that the amount of informal care (provided by family and friends) is rising sharply. Many women of the transition generation will have an unexpected second career – as a carer. At the same time many of them, as late parents, are still grappling with care of their offspring, caught up in a seeming epidemic of mental ill health among teenagers and young adults. The gaps in this threadbare fabric of care are becoming increasingly and painfully evident. Yet we still lack a language of sufficient power and force to make the case, either politically or culturally. It’s as if the historical undervaluing of care as women’s work has been recharged by a contemporary culture of disdain for those human experiences of dependence, commitment and need. Hovering into view is the promise of a solution: robots. Huge amounts of money are being invested, particularly in Japan; one technology corporation claimed in its promotional literature that robots are more patient and attentive than humans. As an underfunded social care system lurches from crisis to crisis, we are being persuaded that we can’t care. On this slippery slope we could be tempted to divest ourselves even of the capability to care, and in doing so, we narrow our understanding of what it is to be human – both for the carer and for the recipient of care.