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Family and community caregiving by the elderly: The new volunteers?
Abstract
This study focuses on the ways in which age, gender and marriage affect the help and support men and women, widows and wives give informally to family and friends, and to others through formal volunteerism. It is based on personal interviews with a stratified random sample of 324 men and women. Both quantitative and qualitative items were used to assess a number of dimensions of caregiving--number of people helped, hours of care, types and number of group memberships, as well as specific caregiving tasks. While much of this labor goes unnoticed, it is central to the building and maintenance of family and community ties, and reveals ways in which social life is organized around aging, gender and marriage. Both disengagement and continuity characterize the caregiving of men and women. Older adults tend to spend less time, giving fewer types of help, to fewer people they know than do younger adults. But older adults spend as much time volunteering and belong to a similar number of groups--most of which are age-specific--as do their younger counterparts. Among the elderly, both gender and marriage significantly affect whether, what and to whom they give care. Older women are more embedded in caregiving relations than are older men. Yet this embeddedness reflects older women's access and control over caregiving resources, more than a uniquely female ethic of care. Furthermore, marriage both pushes and pulls older women into and out of caregiving relations with both kin and non-kin. Marriage integrates women into expanded networks caregiving to family and volunteer groups. However, in spite of the greater material resources marriage provides, marriage restricts older women's caregiving to non-kin. Wives spend less time, helping fewer friends than do widows. Moreover, competing demands from retired or sick husbands often inhibit wives' volunteerism. Finally, this study points to the importance of linking formal and informal caregiving. The connections between caring for family and friends, and formal volunteerism have important implications not only for public policy intended to increase volunteerism among the elderly, but for theories of gender, marriage and aging as well.
Subject Area
Individual & family studies|Social structure|Gerontology|Sociology
Recommended Citation
Gallagher, Sally K, "Family and community caregiving by the elderly: The new volunteers?" (1991). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9207400.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9207400