Family ideology: uneasy entanglements of eldercare in Germany

Abstract

Material pressures on privatized households are commonly absorbed through a family ideology, according to which members must pool resources and care for each other, while the family relations they thereby nurture are inherently valuable and constitute their own reward. Drawing on my fieldwork on family‐based eldercare in Germany, I explore the implications of this ideology. Specifically, I argue that it mollifies family caregivers’ unease about the injustices of Germany's eldercare system. Family members are entangled in this system as employers of mostly low‐paid, migrant caregivers; as performers of unremunerated care work at high personal costs; and, if they are women, as reproducers of a gendered division of care labour they object to and resent. Because this entanglement is filtered through the lens of family ideology, the focus of family caregivers shifts away from these broader injustices and towards co‐caregiver conflicts as well as expectations from and commitments towards other family members.