“Caregiving offers many fringe benefits, including the sheer sensory delight of nourishing and grooming, sharing, and playing. But caregiving does buttonhole you; you're stitched in one place. . . . Paul wasn't on a learning curve but seemed trapped in a circle. He's swoop forward only to loop back again and fall to earth.”

“Much of the control exerted by the caregiver is accomplished through being indirect, such as implying expectations. The caregiver may tell the child what the child feels and thinks, particularly when he or she is upset or angry. "You don't really feel that way, do you?" is a phrase heard often in the families of people with a compressed structure. Statements like, "You want to play the piano for Aunt Martha, don't you?" are used to get the child to do what the caregiver wants without directly asking the child what he wants or not leaving the child any room to say no. The caregiver may act in a way that assumes the child feels as the caregiver feels, as if the child were an extension of the caregiver, by saying, for example, "I'm cold, put on your sweater." Children growing up in this situation become so well attuned to the feelings and will of the caregiver that the caregiver may eventually need only to shiver a little for the child to go to get a sweater for both of them.”

“There are four kinds of people in the world—those who have been caregivers, those who currently are caregivers, those who will be caregivers and those who will need caregivers.” —former first lady Rosalynn Carter”

“A Family Caregiver stays when the rest of the world walks out.”

“Doctors diagnose, nurses heal, and caregivers make sense of it all.”

“Children who experience anxious or ambivalent attachments to their primary caregivers may "fall in love" too easily, seeking extreme closeness right off the bat and reacting intensely to any suggestion of abandonment.”