No one ever referred to me as a care worker. Before I turned 18, I could rock a baby to sleep with one hand while stirring a pot of ugali with the other. At 22, just after graduating with my first degree, I put everything on hold to nurse my mother for more than six months, until she passed on.
I was simply seen as a girl fulfilling her expected duties. No one ever asked about my emotional well-being. Many young people have had to pause or abandon their education to care for a child or an ailing kin. Many have had to make the difficult trade-off between earning an income and caregiving responsibilities. Like many young Kenyans, especially girls, my journey into adulthood was marked by invisible labour. And that came at a cost. Today, as Kenya charts its path through the draft National Care Policy, it is time to examine care work through the lens of its youngest contributors and beneficiaries: Generation Z (13 to 28 years) who constitute up to 30 per cent of the population.
Young people, particularly adolescent girls, are frequently expected to take on unpaid care responsibilities in their households. This invisible labour often comes at the expense of their education, ambitions and well-being. The 2021 Kenya Time Use Survey revealed a stark reality: girls aged between 15 and 17 spend four times more time on unpaid care work than boys. That is not just inequality, it’s time theft.
