Aging in America: Adult Caregiving Conflict essay
The population of our planet is aging rapidly: every second, two people in the world celebrate their sixtieth birthday. Over the past 30 years, the population aged 60 and older has doubled, while by 2050 its share is expected to double again (UNESC, 2012). According to The National Alliance for Caregiving data (2009), persons aged 65 or older make 13% of the United States population, and this figure may grow up to 19% already by 2030. The growing number of elderly people is explained by the improved quality of health care, intensive progress of medicine, advances in health surveillance, as well as expanding access to education and economic prosperity. The opportunity to live a long life is obviously a triumph of human development, however, the rapid aging of population brings with it many new challenges, one of which is the necessity to provide adequate caregiving for the elderly people.
In its essence, aging is quite a natural, gradual extinction of the work of all human organs and systems, including nervous. The transformation in the psyche affect the behavior, prevent an elderly person from coping with life challenges, reduce flexibility and mental alertness, give rise to a predisposition toward conservatism and idealization of the past. In some cases, specific conditions get attached, including intellectual impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, which significantly complicates the lives of both care recipients and caregivers. Misunderstanding of the processes that occur in the body of their old relative or friend generates many conflicts in caregivers, while assuming an obligation to care for an elderly person always has an open-ended term. At the same time, in contrast to children who, with very few exceptions, exchange parent care for independent personal life, over the years, the elderly often become even more and more dependent on those who care for them. Further, in this paper we will review recent researches on inner caregiving conflicts to understand their nature, underlying reasons, as well as major consequences.
Identifying caregivers: gender, intergenerational and interfamily relations
Today, caregivers generally make up to 29% of the U.S. adult population (The National Alliance for Caregiving, 2009), while 43.5 million adult caregivers care for someone aged older that 50, and about 15 million care for someone who has Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia (Alzheimer’s Association, 2011). Among them, 68% are female caregivers, averagely aged 48 (The National Alliance for Caregiving, 2009). Indeed, a number of researches (Holstein et al., 2010; Kramer & Thompson, 2002; Lahaie et al., 2013) state that male caregivers are less prone to providing personal care, while Lee and Tang (2013) study suggests that the situation may change in the nearest future due to a variety of newly emergent social and demographic factors. Thus, Lee and Tang (2013) confirmed that contemporary men are sharing more caregiving tasks than a decade ago, still, according to Lahaie et al. (2013) women still bear the key burden of care. In particular, the comparison of caregiving tasks performed by men and women in elderly married couples shows that 24% of husbands helped their wives to get dressed compared to 28% of female caregivers, and only 16% of husbands helped with bathing versus 30% of wives (Lahaie et al., 2013; p. 254-56). Other studies (Brannen & Petite, 2008; Brank & Wylie, 2014; The National Alliance for Caregiving, 2009) have also demonstrated that about 36% of female caregivers handle the most difficult caregiving tasks (e.g., bathing and toileting) compared to 24% of male caregivers, who, in their turn, are more inclined to help with household budget, arrange care or even hire assistance. Generally, according to Lee and Tang (2013), female caregivers also show to spend more time providing care (21.9 hours per week vs. 17.4 by male caregivers).
A number of studies also signify the influence of age differences on the type and degree of conflict experiences by comparing the quality of care provided in intergenerational and intermarriage relations. In particular, many elderly spouses show greater sincerity in helping one another, and according to Kwak et al. (2012) reports, are satisfied with much more areas of their lives, compared with their adult children. Their emotional investment makes them feel more involved, but at the same time less burdened. They also rarely put their spouse in a rest home, in comparison to what adult children would prefer to do.
Meanwhile, as it was marked above in Kramer and Thompson (2002) and Lahaie et al. (2013) research, wives typically experience greater responsibility for performing caregiving tasks than their husbands, while, a recent study by Lee and Tang (2013) found that husbands who face the role of caregivers showed higher levels of anxiety than women, possibly due to the fact that they were less familiar with this role. Perhaps for the same reason a portion of husbands in research showed to feel satisfaction as now they get an opportunity to reward their wives for all the care they received from them in the past. In contrast, wives who have spent a lifetime caring for children and elderly parents may experience the state of anger and resentment, having found themselves in a position where they must once again take responsibility on their shoulders (Lahaie et al., 2013; Brannen & Petite, 2008; Lee & Tang, 2013).
Indeed, practice reveals that facing caregiving for the elderly parents, adult daughters, at least in the US population samples, feel a greater sense of duty to provide care and take on a caregiver’s role, then adult sons and adult daughters’ own husbands. Suffering a deep role conflict, “women in the middle”, as Kramer and Thompson (2002) defined them, are often unable to perform professional and family duties properly to combine them with the intensive care provision. As a consequence, adult caregiving daughters more often leave their jobs to take care of their parents and start paying less attention to their husbands (Lahaie et al., 2013; Brannen & Petite, 2008; Lee & Tang, 2013).
Another painful intergenerational family conflict includes sibling rivalry issues, when one of the siblings refuses to care for the elderly parent, criticizes the caregiver, or generates strained connections. The cause of sibling friction consists in reviving old relationship patterns and unresolved childhood tensions, sharpened by the newly created pressure of caregiving responsibility. In this case, according to Willyard et al. (2008), adult children start replaying their historical family roles and long forgotten dynamics of competition for parent’s attention. Besides, tensions may intensify in cases when one sibling is unable to accept the reality of parents’ aging problems, and thus distances from caregiving involvement. As a result, typically, only one sibling takes the leading role in care giving, which, however, may depend on non-family-related factors, such as closeness to parents’ house, absence of work and own family (Willyard et al., 2008, p. 1678). Regardless of the reasons, this conflict can lead to situation where one sibling is highly overburdened and the other one feels left out.
In this perspective, intergenerational caregiving is found to become less stressful if the caregiving adult has a life partner. According to Bialon and Coke (2012) studies, married caregivers receive greater support and are less likely to suffer from depression than those without a partner. Besides, comparing families where caregivers were living with their elderly parents and families living separately, Brank and Wylie (2014) found that in the latter case the intergenerational partnership was significantly more strained, while those living together considered their caregiving activities natural.
However, having applied multi-factor models, experts (Brank & Wylie, 2014; Bialon & Coke, 2012; Holstein et al., 2010; Kwak et al., 2012; Willyard et al., 2008) came up to the common conclusion that it is insignificant who is providing care in particular, the elderly wife, husband, adult daughter or son. Instead, it is much more important to know the extent of the emotional connection between the caregiver and care recipient, and the approximate balance of one’s inquiries and resources in the key areas of life including physical, household and social spheres, employment status and financial position, as well as which particular costs are paid by caregiver’s sacrifice.
Aging in America: Adult Caregiving Conflict essay part 2
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