Stuck on a (Super Bowl) Sunday: Caregiving as a "Dream Job"

During last year’s Super Bowl, Google aired a commercial called “Dream Job”.

The commercial opened with a man preparing for a job interview using the Gemini Live (a conversational, voice-based AI feature, on the Google Pixel device).

He practices his responses to interview questions, stating:

“So at my last job I was… working across several different teams…” Then he pauses, catches himself, and says, “Let me try that again….”

Gemini prompts him: “When you’re ready… tell me about the job that taught you the most….”

What follows isn’t his response of his last corporate role, but rather, it shows a flashback to a much younger version of him, holding a baby.

“Well,” he says, as he reflects on this time… and we begin to learn about the “job” he has held for the last 10+ years.

“It was a role where I learned to take constructive criticism,” he says, as we see him feeding his infant while his wife gently offers tips.

He talks about getting used to “working long hours” with a “small team” (visuals of the middle-of-the-night wakeups, him grabbing the baby from the crib and high-fiving his wife as she heads off to get ready for work).

He describes becoming “comfortable multitasking” and “needing to get highly organized”, as the visuals show him taking a call with a baby in one arm, packing labeled milk bags into a diaper tote, and checking a feeding and nap schedule taped to the wall.

He talks about being asked to “make quick decisions and do a lot of negotiating” — pulling his daughter away from the dishwasher, saying one more book.

Gemini prompts him again: “Talk about your experience working with others….”

He says he’s at his best when “collaborating” and “that if it’s what’s best for the team, he’ll do whatever it takes” — and we see him fully committed to silly family costumes.

When the job description Gemini is reviewing mentions “on-the-job training”, he smiles and says he’s a fast learner, learning a dance alongside his daughter.

He admits he doesn’t always have all the answers, Googling “how to explain bullying to a child” as he comforts her. (Oof, pulls at your heart as a parent).

But, he says, he gets the job done — even teaching her how to drive. He’s not afraid to admit when he’s wrong, slipping an “I’m sorry” note under her bedroom door after an argument.

And most importantly, “he shows up”. Every day. No matter what. We see sports games, sick days, quiet moments caring for the elderly family dog.

Then Gemini asks, “When it comes to work, what motivates you?”

(Ok if you’re following along via the video at all this is where I really really lost it 😭)

We watch a photo collage flash across the screen of his daughter growing up, seeing her graduate high school, and prepare to leave for college.

He answers the motivation question: “Knowing people can depend on me,” he says. “And knowing I can depend on them too.”

He drops her off at college. Gemini tells him it’s a great answer and that it sounds like he’s ready for his interview. And we see him, older now, sitting down in front of his computer to take the interview — ready to “re-enter” the workforce.

Rewatching that commercial today, tears are fully streaming down my face.

I couldn’t — and still can’t — get over the fact that we were finally seeing a commercial on “TV’s biggest day” that framed caregiving not as a detour or a sacrifice, but as formative to one’s career path.

That showed it as skill-building. As meaningful work. And yes, the fact that it was a DAD staying at home mattered — enormously — but the deeper value of the ad for me was what it implied: that being a full time caregiver can be a “dream job”, and that the skills required to succeed in this role are not separate from the ones we celebrate in corporate life.

As someone who had just left my job the year before the commercial aired — and who talks about “seasons” a lot, I related to this deeply. The ad depicts a partnership that feels aspirational but also recognizable — one parent leaning into paid work while the other takes on the work at home, high-fiving each other in the margins, moving together as a team.

And it shows something we rarely see but are beginning to talk more about: that this arrangement isn’t permanent or diminishing, but totally fluid. That when kids are more independent — in this case, college, but is often much sooner — returning to work is framed as a continuation, not a restart.

It’s a world I would love to see more of.

And yet — I still have to state an unfortunate truth: the ease with which the commercial depicts that re-entry doesn’t reflect the reality most caregivers face.

Getting back into the workforce is rarely that seamless or dignified. Résumé gaps are scrutinized. Confidence erodes in candidates’ abilities. Skills are questioned as “up to date”. Caregiving is praised rhetorically, but rarely treated as legitimate experience when it actually matters.

And of course, the data we saw this year reflects that. Over the past year alone, hundreds of thousands of women have left the workforce, not because they stopped caring about their careers, but because the structure of work still assumes someone else is absorbing the caregiving load.

Which is what led me to write recently about the exhausting, circular debate we keep having around working moms versus stay-at-home moms. As I stated:

“What if we stopped forcing Moms into binaries and instead understood careers as sliding scales? Some seasons the slider moves toward paid work. Some seasons it moves toward caregiving. Most seasons it sits somewhere in between, constantly adjusting based on kids, energy, finances, support systems, and life.”

That post resonated — but I also appreciated that people in the comments immediately called out that if we want progress, this sliding scale has to apply to dads too.

And they’re right. Women have been sliding their careers back and forth for generations, often quietly and often at real cost. We’ve learned when to step back, when to push forward, when to absorb the professional and financial hit because someone has to. The system has relied on that. And flexibility that only applies to one parent isn’t flexibility — it’s imbalance.

Several people also named an important nuance: the early months, and often years, of a child’s life do often require a great deal of physical presence from mothers. Postpartum recovery. Nursing. Bonding. Healing. But that reality doesn’t disappear just because we want equality to be tidy. What matters is what happens after those early years — and who is expected to keep bending.

Because when the slider only moves for moms, the consequences compound. Economically. Professionally. Politically. Women lose earning power and security over time. We lose influence and representation in leadership and decision-making spaces, not because women aren’t capable, but because systems still reward uninterrupted presence.

Which brings me back to that Google commercial…. The world it depicts is still the world many of us want — one where caregiving is valued, where roles can shift, where careers are allowed to bend without breaking the people inside them. The problem isn’t the demand. It’s that we haven’t built the systems to support it yet.

So as we head into another Super Bowl today, I find myself wondering whether we’ll see any more commercials like that one — not just celebrating parenting, but grappling with what it actually takes to support it.

Whether we’ll move beyond symbolism and start designing structures that make sliding scales livable. And whether we’re finally ready to let the slider move — for moms and dads — without penalty.

I don’t know the answer. But I do know this: the future isn’t binary. It isn’t going to just be about “working parents” or “stay-at-home parents.” It’s going to be about movement. About seasons. And most importantly, about partnership and societal support.

And the career slider is allowed to move.

The question is whether we’re ready to let it — not just in ads, but in real life.

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Take care this week (and as a Seattle native, GO HAWKS!)

Kaleana