Families' Values and Attitudes Regarding Responsibility for the Frail Elderly

Abstract

This study examines the norms and values associated with care to disabled and frail aging parents, in particular those with regard to the sharing of responsibilities for care between families and formal services, and this within three age cohorts in Quebec, Canada. It is based on a telephone interview of 1,315 people. Factor analysis yielded four factors: (1) family responsibility; (2) uncompromising family obligations; (3) acceptance of services; (4) distrust of services. Analyses of the data indicate that all three age cohorts consider that families have responsibilities for their aging family members, at the same time that they score very high on the acceptance of service scale. This article discusses these seemingly paradoxical results and their implications for aging policy.

Baby-boomers and the ‘denaturalisation’ of care-giving in Quebec

“…Competing considerations can legitimately be invoked to reinforce or limit feelings of responsibility for older family members. Considerations such as the nature of the inter-personal relationship, obligations to descendants, personalities, or competing demands can all justify the non-fulfilment of some or all responsibilities to the older parent (Lavoie 2000; Guberman et al 2006). As one respondent reflected:I'd like to move my parents to my home, but I'd have to really think about it.…”

“…The interviews covered the following themes: the organisation of care-giving and the trajectory that led the respondent to care-giving, the use or not of public, private and community services and the reasons for this, the consequences of this organisation of care-giving on different aspects of their lives, their expectations regarding care-giving and in particular their own future care-giving, their perception of baby-boomers and their identification with this group, and their perception of the differences in care-giving with previous generations. We also administered and discussed a questionnaire on norms and values with regard to care-giving that we had developed for a previous study (Guberman et al 2006). Interviews took place in French or English.…”

Where would Canadians prefer to die? Variation by situational severity, support for family obligations, and age in a national study

“…Third, we assessed support for family obligations to provide care using an adapted version of the Family Norms Scale [ 45 ] that was initially developed in French and English with a focus on caring for older frail family members. We modified the 14 items to refer to dying rather than older or frail family members (see Additional File 1 ).…”

“…We followed significant effects with post-hoc pairwise comparisons using Fisher’s least significant difference (LSD) procedure. We report both statistical test information (with significant effects associated with p ≤ .05, two-tailed) and partial eta-squared as a measure of effect size in which small, medium, and large effects are associated with η p 2 values of .01, .06, and .14, respectively [ 45 ]. Very few data were missing on the sociodemographic variables in Table 2 (ranging from 0 to 15 out of 2500) or on the ratings of preferences for place of death across the three severity scenarios (ranging from 8 to 15 out of 2500).…”

The Meaning of a Visual Arts Program for Older Adults in Complex Residential Care

“…By 2036, this number is projected to reach over 10 million (Statistics Canada, 2015). Older adults are at higher risk for transition to residential care if they have (a) limitations in personal care abilities, (b) multiple chronic health conditions, and (c) lack of nearby family or friends who are willing and able to provide support (Guberman et al, 2006). Advancing age is also a strong predictor of institutionalization (Luppa et al, 2010).…”