Older male carers and the positive aspects of care

Abstract

Older men are becoming more visible in care-giving research but there are still few studies that focus expressly on the extent to which care-giving has made positive contributions to their life and has been rewarding. Drawing on data from in-depth personal interviews, this Portuguese study analyses the positive statements in the personal descriptions of the care-giving experience of 53 elderly men who were caring for chronically-ill wives. It also explores the differences between the positive references made by the men who were caring for a wife who had dementia and those made by men whose wives had physical impairments. Using open coding and content analysis, positive aspects were identified in 32 of the 53 care-giving situations. The most prevalent themes were ‘satisfaction’ and ‘perceived social honour’. The findings show that positive returns from the caring experience and role were strongly associated with previous good marital relationships and the husband's good self-rated health, and manifested in both specific coping strategies and global and situational meaning-making processes. The study demonstrates that much more can be learnt about the positive dimensions of care in older men's lives, and that such understanding can inform and strengthen formal and therapeutic support.

The positive aspects of caregiving in dementia: A critical review of the qualitative literature

“…Furthermore, those studies that formed a part of a larger piece of research tended not to report as much detail of the data collection method, particularly in terms of who collected the data, their training and potential influence they may have had on the process (Butcher & Buckwalter, 2002;Farran et al, 1991;Jansson, Almberg, Grafström, & Winblad, 1998;Jervis, Boland & Fickenscher 2010;Peacock et al, 2010;Ribeiro & Paúl, 2008;Shim, Barroso, Gilliss & Davis, 2013). Even in cases where interviewer information was provided, in all but one study -Netto et al, 2009 -it was not the author of the study that carried out the interviews.…”

Vieillir, un fardeau pour les proches ?1

“…Le fait peut sembler, à première vue, surprenant, de nombreuses études ayant documenté la différence d'engagement entre les hommes et les femmes dans l'aide aux proches âgés et mis l'accent sur la moindre participation des hommes (Pennec, 1999). Même si notre échantillon est limité, ce constat fait cependant écho aux observations d'autres recherches, qui ont montré combien l'investissement des conjoints masculins pouvait être intense (Rose et Bruce, 1995 †;Ribeiro et Paul, 2008 † ;Petite et Weber, 2006) 9 .…”

“…Noonan, Tennstedt et Rebelski (1996) Care (1996) aux satisfactions des proches, cette « †dimension négli-gée †» de l'aide. Ribeiro et Paul (2008) vont même jusqu'à se focaliser sur ces aspects positifs, qui sont évoqués par près des deux tiers des hommes portugais âgés, aidants de leur épouse, qu'ils ont rencontrés, ce qui leur permet de distinguer la satisfaction que ces hommes éprouvent à accompagner leur épouse de la considéra-tion sociale qu'ils reçoivent pour prix de leur dévouement -estime sociale dont on peut d'ailleurs considérer qu'elle est plus particulièrement décernée aux aidants masculins (Rose et Bruce, 1995). Les enquêtes quantitatives, lorsqu'elles ne s'appuient pas sur des échelles exclusivement centrées sur les difficultés des aidants (comme celle de Zarit dont les 22 questions renvoient toutes à des sentiments négatifs) donnent aussi à voir les réalités contrastées de l'aide.…”

“Self-Employed” in Caregivinghood: The Contribution of Swedish Informal Caregivers’ Environmental and Contextual Resistance Resources and Deficits

“…Caregiving research has also emerged from new geographical areas, including Japan [36,62,63], Taiwan [64], China [48,55], and so-called developing countries [65][66][67]. Gender aspects have been granted specific attention, such as the male caregiver experience [59,66,[68][69][70][71][72] as well as issues related to relationships with spouses [44,73,74] and adult children caring for aging parents [62,75].…”