Day of caring parents: why visibility is the first step

24 October 2025 was the first nationwide "Day of Caring Parents" in Germany. I thought hard about whether to write something or simply keep the day for myself and my family. I chose to write. Because that's what this day is about: visibility. Nothing more, nothing less.

What this day isn't

This day isn't a holiday. It isn't an invitation to pity. It isn't a vehicle for collecting donations or scoring political points either. At least not for me. For me this day is a moment to step out of cover for a minute as a parent who cares. Because caring parents in Germany are very well camouflaged.

We function. We take our children to therapy, to clinics, to rehab. We're on the phone with health insurers who lose our paperwork. We apply for things that should already have been approved. We work alongside it, some full-time, some self-employed. We're tired, and we rarely talk about it. Not because we couldn't. Because time is short and life keeps moving.

And because pity doesn't help. What helps is understanding.

Why visibility isn't a luxury

If you don't know that people like us exist, you can't build structures that fit us. I see this in working life, in schools, in administrative offices, in politics. Caring parents are often lumped in with the classic situation of caring for elderly relatives. But those are two very different realities.

When I care for my child, I do it for years, sometimes decades. I don't enter a "caring phase" at the end of a life. I live family, work, therapy planning, school support, medication management and clinical stays in parallel, and somewhere between all that I try to organise something close to a normal family life. It's no more and no less than daily life. But it's a different daily life.

That's exactly why a day naming it matters. Not so we can stand whining in the corner. So that we appear at all in HR departments, schools, public administration and laws. You can't solve problems you don't know exist.

What I wish for

I don't wish for organisations to launch campaigns on this day that are over again on 25 October. I wish for smaller, quieter things. For an employer to listen when a member of staff says: "I have a child in hospital right now." For a teacher to understand why homework occasionally falls off the back of the cart. For a clerk in an office to ask one fewer time, "Have you got that in triplicate?"

I wish caring parents weren't treated as edge cases by health insurance systems but as the carers they actually are. That applications moved faster. That benefits, once approved, actually arrived. That nobody had to prove every single year that their child's underlying condition hasn't suddenly evaporated.

My personal takeaway

For me the Day of Caring Parents is a quiet day. I'm not walking through Düsseldorf with placards. I'm not posting a heart graphic. I'm writing a piece, because words are sometimes the only thing that stays when you live inside a system where many things don't.

If you're a caring parent yourself: you're not alone. Even if your daily life feels exactly like that. If you aren't, but you know somebody who is: just ask how they are. Not casually. The way that leaves room for an honest answer.

That's the whole point of this day. Not show, not symbolic politics, but an invitation to look. And looking is the first step towards better structures. I've learnt that in my life across many contexts — as a father, as a business owner, as a human being.

The next 24 October will come. Maybe by then we'll be a few small steps further. That alone would be a lot.