Incarcerated Mothers Reports of Their Daughters' Antisocial Behavior,Maternal Supervision and Mother-Daughter Relationship

ABSTRACT

This study examines the extent of delinquency and antisocial behavior among adolescent daughters of incarcerated mothers and the influence of the mother-daughter relationship and maternal supervision on daughters' participation in delinquency and antisocial behavior. One hundred and one incarcerated mothers completed survey questionnaires that asked about their daughters' participation and involvement in antisocial and delinquent behavior and the nature of both mother-daughter relationship and maternal supervision. Overall, mothers reported low levels of involvement in antisocial or delinquent behavior for their daughters. Participation in antisocial behavior was inversely related to positive mother-daughter relationship. Maternal supervision was not related to level of participation in antisocial or delinquent behavior.     

Gender and intimate caregiving for the elderly in Hong Kong

This paper analyzes the special challenges posed by caregiving provided by adult children to their physically impaired parents and in-laws, particularly as they relate to the issues of gendered eldercare and caregiving stress. Through the use of 16 semi-structured intensive interviews conducted in Hong Kong, we find that the discourses on sexualized and gendered bodies create formidable obstacles to the caregiving process. The sexual taboo in its various manifestations induces discomfit and even repulsion in situations where private parts of the body of the elderly are exposed and touched. Such hindrances create conflicts and stress for caregivers and care receivers alike, especially for women caregivers due to the social expectation that they are “natural” caregivers. Our study suggests that the key to overcoming such obstacles depends on a strong sense of filial gratitude, as well as the successful development of a respectful caregiving relationship between children and parents.     

Sources of stress reported by daughters of nursing home residents

The accounts of 31 daughters (M = 48.2 years) who had a parent living in a nursing home were examined. Data from 7 focus group discussions that explored the stressful experiences daughters encountered in providing care to their parents were content-analyzed. Eight major stressor themes were identified: sense of responsibility, losses, role change, conflicting perceptions of parent's ability, realization of own vulnerabilities, facing the unknown, lack of family support, and lack of appropriate facility care. The results shed light on the kinds of stressors these daughters faced and point to the influence that prior family and caregiving histories may have on the daughters' present experience.     

A Vignette Study on Gendered Filial Expectations of Elders in Rural China

This investigation integrated vignette and survey design to study how sons' reduced availability and daughters' increased contributions to parents influenced Chinese rural elders' gendered filial expectations, measured with their beliefs about obligations of a vignette daughter and a vignette son to their postsurgery parent. The sample included 802 elders from 2001, 2003, and 2006 waves of a longitudinal study on rural elders in Anhui Province, China. Multinomial logistic regressions showed that the vignette sons' migration and actual daughters' previous contributions increased elder women's, but not men's, endorsement of the vignette daughter's obligations. The vignette son's child‐care responsibilities affected neither women's nor men's beliefs, but the vignette daughters' migration and child‐care responsibilities reduced respondents' expectations of the vignette daughter. This study directs attention to the discrepancy between social changes and individuals' attitudes because of structural lags as well as to the importance of examining factors that will reduce the discrepancy.     

Religious and Spiritual Dimensions of the Vietnamese Dementia Caregiving Experience

This paper focuses on the role of religion and spirituality in dementia caregiving among Vietnamese refugee families. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with nine Vietnamese caregivers of persons with dementia, then tape-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for emergent themes. Caregivers related their spirituality/religion to three aspects of caregiving: (1) their own suffering, (2) their motivations for providing care, and (3) their understanding of the nature of the illness. Key terms or idioms were used to articulate spiritual/religious dimensions of the caregivers' experience, which included sacrifice, compassion, karma, blessings, grace and peace of mind. In their narratives, the caregivers often combined multiple strands of different religions and/or spiritualities: Animism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Catholicism. Case studies are presented to illustrate the relationship between religion/spirituality and the domains of caregiving. These findings have relevance for psychotherapeutic interventions with ethnically diverse populations.     

Making the best of it: Themes of meaning among informal caregivers to the elderly

Interviews with 48 informal caregivers to the elderly indicate that the concept of caregiver meaning can help explain why many caregivers persevere in their roles despite the stress involved. Several general themes of caregiver meaning were found: Gratification and Satisfaction with the caregiving role, a sense of Family Responsibility/Reciprocity, the Friendship and Company which caregiving provided, and a commitment to Doing What Needs to Be Done. Less frequently utilized themes were: having a Caring Personality, and experiencing Personal Growth and an Improved Relationship with the elder. These themes echo the complexity of caregiver meaning reported in the literature to date, and two related interpretations of that complexity are posited: that meaning has both an emotional and a cognitive component, and that there are two different dynamics operating—searching for meaning and finding meaning.     

Hong Kong Chinese aging adults voice financial care expectations in changing family and sociocultural contexts: implications for policy and services

Despite being one of the world’s wealthiest cities, approximately one-third of Hong Kong older adults live below the poverty line. Innovatively using the Photovoice research method, this study invited 36 Hong Kong Chinese aging adults to photograph images and voice their concerns and expectations regarding financial care. Insufficient government support, diminishing family support, insecurity and fear regarding future finances, and strong desire for self-sufficiency through early preparation and bridge employment were recurring themes observed in the participants’ photographs and narratives. The shifting of the participants’ financial care expectations from informal to formal sources in changing family and sociocultural contexts indicated that older people are in urgent need of policy reform from a needs-based to rights-based approach to foster empowerment and fulfill older people’s rights of financial security, dignity and participation. Improving the retirement protection system should go hand in hand with encouraging family support and caregiving and creating age-friendly working environment for older residents. The findings of this study may have crucial policy implications for Hong Kong and other aging societies, especially those that share similar filial piety values and have seemingly ungenerous welfare systems.     

Space,time, and self: Rethinking aging in the contexts of immigration and transnationalism

Critical gerontology views aging as a social construction that reflects the intersections of micro-processes with the macro-level forces of individual aging experiences. In the contexts of immigration and transnationalism, however, the macro-structural conditions, dynamics and experiences of aging have become further diversified and complicated. The dearth of empirical and explanatory knowledge in this area has inhibited us from comprehending aging in a changing world. Drawing on data from a study of Chinese grandparents' experiences of transnational caregiving in Canada, this article examines the impacts of such experiences on three interconnected dimensions – spatial, temporal and cognitive – of aging. Although the practice of transnational caregiving allows skilled immigrant families to mobilize care resources outside Canada, it has not only ruptured the traditional trajectories of aging for their elderly parents, but also complicated the inequalities that they have to bear on individual, familial and transnational levels. I argue that the critical examination of aging in the context of transnational caregiving helps us take into consideration those dimensions (such as place, space, time, and knowledge) that are changed by immigration processes, and rethink aging from a broader perspective that links seniors' experiences with their relationship with their adult immigrant children's families and macro-structures outside national borders.     

Reciprocities in caregiving relationships in Danish elder care

This article examines the nature of the reciprocal relationships between elderly people and both their informal caregivers and home helpers in Denmark. One of the key results concerns the importance that elderly care recipients attached to various forms of reciprocity. The two major ones were hospitality and gift giving. While informal caregivers see their caregiving as normative or as generalized reciprocity, many stressed that the elderly person's personality and their expressions of gratitude and appreciation (symbolic reciprocity) were important factors facilitating caregiving. Home helpers spoke of satisfaction in helping others, but also underlined the fact that they could see some good role models for their own old age. The results are analyzed on the backdrop of the nature of the Danish welfare system, which provided liberal pensions and benefits. This indirect reciprocity enabled elderly people to retain their ability to participate in reciprocal social relations and preserve their integrity and independence.     

Young adult carers: a literature review informing the re-conceptualisation of young adult caregiving in Australia

The experiences of young adult carers (YACs) have been vastly under-researched, particularly within Australian caregiving literature. This article explores the existence, extent and nature of informal young adult caregiving in Australia, defining YACs as individuals aged between 18 and 25 years who provide unpaid care or support to family members living with chronic illness or disability. The aim of this article is to provide a foundation for the re-conceptualisation of YACs as a distinct carer cohort who, without suitable recognition and specifically targeted support, may experience significantly reduced future life opportunities. The traditional, narrative-based review will first redefine YACs in accordance with overseas literary definitions and will then explore the complex nature and extent of young adult caregiving in Australia. Explanations as to why young adults are increasingly undertaking these informal caregiving roles and how YACs differentiate from their non-carer peers will then follow. Finally, three prominent paradigms, namely the clinical, social capital and carers' rights' perspectives, will be presented to establish a greater understanding of the implications, contextual experiences and unmet civil rights of YACs in Australia.     

Joy and sorrow: Explaining Chinese caregivers' reward and stress

This study explores positive and negative aspects of Chinese caregivers' experience, specifically, caregiving social reward as well as depression. Based on data collected in 1997–1999 with 110 caregivers who were then taking care of physically dependent parents or parents-in-law, this study finds that caregivers caring for elder parents with pensions reported higher levels of social rewards. Caregivers who were unemployed and had poor self-rated health reported higher levels of depression. Cultural values were found to have two dimensions of effect on caregiving experiences: while caregivers' report of strong filial responsibility was positively related to caregivers' depression scores, caregivers' report of social pressure was negatively related to their report of social reward. The author argues that the dual effect of family economic conditions and caregivers' cultural values calls for greater attention to elders' financial stability and caregivers' psychological well-being.     

Husbands and sons in the United States and Japan: Cultural expectations and caregiving experiences

In the United States and Japan, social and demographic changes are placing pressure on men to become involved in elder care. In Japan, 15 percent of caregivers to the elderly are men compared with 28 percent in the United States. This qualitative study uses in-depth interviews with 15 Japanese and 30 American men to compare their daily caregiving experiences and examine the impact of culture on their roles. We identify common elements as well as differences in husbands' and sons' motivations to take on this role, the tasks they perform, the impact on their lives, and societal responses. Culture is a factor in the social shaping of the caregiving experience through different societal expectations about the roles, coupled with different family structure, different caregiving ideals, different views on dependency, and different views on self-expression and on the need to maintain harmonious relationships.     

A review of the biopsychosocial aspects of caregiving for aging family members

With the ever-increasing growth in the aging population, the need for care providers will also continue to rise. Many of these caregivers will provide informal care to family members and friends at a price to their own physical, psychological, and social well-being. This article examines the phenomenon of caregiving and provides a review of the biological, psychological, and social impacts of caregiving to care providers. George Engel’s biopsychosocial model is explored to examine the biological, psychological, and social factors that can affect a caregiver’s health and well-being. This article further explores social work practice implications and strategies for future intervention to reduce caregiver burnout and aid in their self-preservation.     

Maternal Regulation of Daughters' Emotion During Conflicts From Early to Mid‐Adolescence

Primary caregivers play an important role in emotion socialization. Real‐time mother–daughter emotion socialization was examined in 45 mother–daughter dyads with early‐adolescent daughters (age M = 11.80, SD = .27) at the first observation point. Maternal supportive emotion regulation and daughters' emotions were coded during two conflict discussions, 2 years apart. With multilevel survival analysis, the likelihood of maternal supportiveness was predicted both over time, between early and mid‐adolescence, and by daughters' pubertal status. Mothers were more likely to respond to daughters' negative and positive emotions with supportiveness for daughters whose pubertal maturation occurred relatively early. Results suggest that mothers adjust their socialization of daughters' emotions according to their daughters' pubertal development.     

Family support in late life: A review of the literature on aging,disability, and family caregiving

ABSTRACT

For older adults and people with disabilities in the United States, family caregiving is an important part of remaining at home and in the community. As care recipients and caregivers age, family dynamics change, and the health, social, and financial impacts of this (largely unremunerated) work have implications for individuals, families, and social policy. In this review, the authors map the literature across multiple fields related to disability and aging to understand caregiving in late life, what it means to be an older caregiver and/or to care for older people. The authors summarize the findings of 97 articles to address the care, services, and supports family caregivers provide for older adults; negative and positive impacts for caregivers serving in this role; supports that family members use or need; and societal impact of family caregiving. Much of the literature describes the work family caregivers provide and negative impacts of caregiving. Less attention is devoted to caregiving benefits, supports used by family caregivers, and societal impacts. The authors conclude with an agenda for future research that attends to the need for research that includes: more diverse samples, new types of caregivers, longitudinal data, qualitative data and analysis, and comparative research.     

Gendered stories of parental caregiving among siblings

Using data from in-depth interviews with eight pairs of male and female siblings, we investigate the influence of gender on the division of responsibility among adult children who are providing care to their elderly parent and how parental caregiving provides an opportunity for the explicit (re)negotiation of gender dynamics across household boundaries. We explore the ways that “helper brothers” and “co-provider brothers” divide care with their sisters, and the impact of this division of care on the sisters' roles as coordinators of care and their future plans for their parents' care. “Specialized knowledge” also emerges as an important factor in the gendered division of care among the respondents. Finally, we examine the consequences of our findings with regards to gender relations and discuss the limitations of this exploratory study.     

Social policies regarding caregiving to elders: Canadian contradictions

In Canada, disparate social policies--to do with health, family, income security, housing, and so forth--influence caregiving to elders. They are contradictory policies because of their different objectives, histories, and jurisdictions. The wider context of societal and socio-demographic changes highlight additional contradictions in the principles on which social policies regarding caregiving rest. Some of these contradictions are discussed in terms of policies, their consequences, whether intended or not, and what the future might hold for Canadian policies and programs with implications for caregiving to elders.