Father’s Day: A Time to Celebrate Caregiving

Tom Frisk lives in Bangor, Maine. He’s a dad who needed to care for his own dad as he was dying, and for his wife after she developed early onset Alzheimer’s.

As we celebrate Father’s Day, we salute the many men like Tom whose own experience has propelled them to get involved in the fight for paid family and medical leave. Tom recognizes that the need for affordable time to care touches all of us: “Whether you’re a young family just starting out with a new child, someone looking after an aging parent, or like me and taking care of someone you love who is sick, at some point most working people will need to take time away from the job to become a caregiver.”

Tom would have liked to work longer, but wound up retiring early from his job as a teacher in order to care for his wife. “I had to choose between taking care of my wife and my job,” he says. “I don’t think that’s a choice that other people should have to make.” Paid leave would have allowed him to stay on for several more years.

For Tom, creating a paid family and medical fund is an expression of the kind of mutual care he experienced serving his country. “I spent four years in the US Coast Guard, working on a buoy tender, an ice breaker and at lighthouses,” he said. “I spent another seventeen years in the Maine Army National Guard, including time as a combat engineer and supply. During my service, I learned that you have to be able to count on other people and we need to take care of one another. To me, that means that we need to develop a system that understands that bad things can happen to all of us — things that are beyond our control — and that helps to protect working people from financial disaster.”

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there caring for kids, for a parent, a partner or some other loved one. Your caregiving and your activism inspire us.