Why I care as a CEO and daughter
This blogpost is written by our CEO and Co-founder, Siran Cao. She recounts her own caregiving story, discusses the value of care, and why it’s so important.
Mel and I started Mirza as a reaction to, or perhaps a synthesis of, experiences that teach a hard lesson—our social and work structures can force trade-offs between personal aspirations in the work sphere and the caregiving roles important to us at home. This recognition is an almost universal experience for women–and for more millennial men–that caregiving and career crash, and the shared realization that “having it all” is simply a myth.
We want to start sharing our stories of those moments, to open up the conversation around how we as a society undervalue caregiving. It helps us feel less alone, puts the shared experience in frame, and hopefully, drives our collective motivation to change those structures.
So here’s my caregiving story, the moments in my life that encapsulated this trade off and drove home “why I care.”
My family immigrated to the United States when I was eight, where my dad left my mom and me. My mom was a biochemist in China, but had become my primary caregiver as the family moved around for my dad’s career. She took flexible jobs in different sectors, but it was different—it wasn’t her passion. So in the States, my newly single mom couldn’t get back into her original field and had to entirely rebuild: work during the day, school at night, trying to make ends meet, all with a daughter too young, or too naive, to understand financial constraints. But what I did understand was the pride my mom had when she spoke of her work in China. She taught me to be fiercely driven by my aspirations, especially since that was what she had sacrificed - her own. She may not have thought it would be a permanent sacrifice at the time my family first moved, prioritizing my dad’s career, but it stuck.
I hadn’t expected one of those decision points in my own life so early, but when it did, that moment drove home what we’re so dedicated to changing. Daughters are often caregivers for their parents, and that started early for me. Once my dad left, I felt responsible for taking care of my mom; even though she was perfectly capable, her health and safety and happiness were constantly on my mind. I worried about her. So when it came to deciding where to enroll for college, I came head to head with that caregiving role; I could either attend the University of Pittsburgh or Harvard. The former offered a scholarship that would effectively pay me to attend, and I could live at home or visit often to check on my mom. (We lived in Pittsburgh at the time.) I could provide extra money for the family. The latter offered full financial aid and so much opportunity—it’s the immigrant “American dream”—but I still had costs for books, travel back and forth, and more. It may sound like a no-brainer on paper, but it wasn’t; that “and more” included the cost that mattered to me most. I was scared that, on her own, with me far away, my mom wouldn't be okay and wouldn't take care of herself. I feared for her health and safety.
I think about these decision points as branches in a tree. If we choose to go down one path, that branch may not intersect with, or we may lose access to, the options afforded by another branch. That’s what happened for my mom with biochem; she lost access to that branch. I think about her passion, what she could have accomplished in the field she had chosen, the innovations she could have unlocked. I think about the financial implications of those missing years from her pension or retirement system, when her paid work was in disparate fields and underpaid. In my own decision tree, my mom made the choice for me—perhaps appropriate, since having me effectively made the choice for her. She pushed me to choose my career, at least in that first juncture of choosing a university. How much of that was wrapped up in financial security? I’d argue most. The prestige of elite universities is tied with unlocking economic security.
Perhaps if our society were one that valued caregiving, in which care work was compensated, then I wouldn’t worry about my mom’s retirement, and she wouldn’t have had to push me to choose my university with my brain, not my heart. Perhaps if those (very transferable) skills from care were well-regarded for re-entry onto a career track, alongside personal aspirations, then these decision points would no longer be divergent branches, and my mother would be continuing her research on human health today.
Our shared experiences and stories fuel our work at Mirza: to “change the math” around care with our technology; the “Mom’s salary after tax is less than childcare”; affordability of care with employer-driven financial solutions; supply of care by tapping into and compensating the networks we use today; and the culmination of all that, in the value of care work itself. Care has historically been done by women and especially by women of color, either unpaid or absurdly underpaid. The biggest reason women retire into poverty is that caregiving years go unrecognized for social security or pensions; our societal values and structural de-valuing of care is also what pushes men into the prototypical “breadwinning” roles that many in my generation rail against… It's all because we don’t value care. But it’s time we start.
