None of us could look away from last month’s two-part Lifetime documentary detailing talk show host Wendy Williams’ stunning reversal of fortune. But as the world watched the former Queen of All Media come unglued, my eyes weren’t on Wendy but on her 24-year-old son, Kevin Hunter, Jr.
An only child, unmarried and still relying on his millionaire mother’s financial support, Kevin Jr. had a look on his face throughout the “Where Is Wendy Williams?” documentary that I know all too well. It was the look of a dilemma: whether he could balance his ailing mother’s needs as her legal and financial guardian while tending to his own needs as a young man coming into adulthood.
I was 56 when I left Detroit, my home of 30 years, and moved in with my parents in Virginia after they both were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Seven years later, I’m still here. My father has passed away, but my mother is now 90.
In 2020, my adult son quarantined with us during the first years of the pandemic. As a very ill, Type-1 diabetic, he was sometimes able to help with the caregiving. More often, he needed care himself. (One night, he nearly died in his sleep as his blood sugar plummeted.)
Thank goodness his disease is now managed, and he’s able to live on his own. But as soon as he moved out, I became the primary custodian of my three grandchildren, all under the age of 8. They have lived with me and their great grandmother full-time since 2022. Last year, their mother (my sweet daughter) followed them into the fold, finally able to break away from an abusive marriage.
It’s no wonder I call my four-generation household, “Shady Pines Rest Home.”
Caregiving has cost me thousands of dollars as I’ve tried to keep our family ship afloat and thousands more in lost income. It has zapped my energy, made me wonder if I was losing my mind, pushed me into deep depression, left me stranded and isolated with no social outlets.
Sure, there have been many glimpses of joy. I value life in very different ways than I did before shouldering the care of so many that I love. I’m at peace in knowing that my mother is receiving the best care in her last months (she is now in home hospice), that my daughter is now going back to school, that my grandchildren are safe and happy. But the hard toll it has taken on me cannot be understated. People tell me that I will get my reward. Now as I reach old age myself, that seems unlikely.
Which brings me back to Wendy Williams’ son Kevin Jr. At the very least, I got to live out my young adulthood, building my own life and raising a family. But for young Millennials like him, that might become increasingly impossible.
According to a March 2023 study by AARP, about 38 million Americans are unpaid family caregivers—the vast majority of whom are women. While their median age is 49, almost a quarter of them are between the ages of 18 and 34.
The National Institutes of Health reports that the older population will double by 2030, forming a demographic surge that, combined with troubling social trends, is sure to create a perfect storm for Millennials in particular. For decades now, people in their 20s and 30s have been delaying marriage and childbearing.
This means that young adults may have to undertake the long-term care of their parents at a time in life when they have little financial security, scant work experience or educational achievement, are not yet partnered, and little opportunity to develop socially. And, because families are now so small, the responsibility might fall to sons who have not been socialized to provide family care.
Sons like Kevin.
In segment one of “Where Is Wendy Williams?,” an ill, teary Wendy Williams lamented the fact that financial guardianship had separated her from her money. She warned: “If this could happen to me, it could happen to you.”
But I looked past her warning to the deer-in-the-headlights expression on the face of her beloved son, Kevin Jr., and I couldn’t help but think: It’s already happening to him.
And I sincerely hope it doesn’t happen to you.