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Daughters Caring for Mothers: the Experience of Caring and its Implications for Professional Helpers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

Jane Lewis  and
Barbara Meredith
Jane Lewis
Affiliation:
Department of Social Science and Administration, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE, England.
Barbara Meredith
Affiliation:
Health, Social Services Information and Policy Officer, Age Concern England.
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Abstract

Recent research on ways of ‘supporting the supporters’ of elderly people at home has taken a ‘snapshot’ approach to assessing carers' needs and has focussed primarily on the perceptions of service providers. Such an approach tends to neglect the complexity of caring relationships (particularly that between carer and person cared for), which must be understood if carers are to be offered appropriate help. The present paper reports the construction of ‘caring biographies’, using in-depth interviews with 41 daughters who had cared for their mothers on a co-resident basis and who had ceased to do so within the last ten years. The biographies were used to examine the nature of the caring process in terms of the carer's motivation to care, changes in the mother/daughter relationship and in the carer's extra-caring life. The research reveals both the power exerted by the injunction to care and the mixed legacy of satisfaction overlaid with bitterness that was experienced by a majority of respondents, largely as a result of inadequate and/or inappropriate support. We suggest ways in which professional workers may recast the way in which they approach the needs of carers based on a deeper understanding of the temporal and relational dimensions of caring.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

NOTES

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