Taking Care of Our Own

Abstract

Mixing personal history, interviewee voices, and academic theory from the fields of care work, the sociology of work, medical sociology, and nursing, this book introduces us to the hidden world of family caregivers. Using a multidimensional approach, the book seeks to understand and analyze the types of skilled work that family caregivers do, the processes through which they learn and negotiate new skills, and the meanings that both caregivers and nurses attach to their care work. The book is based on sixty-two in-depth interviews with family caregivers, home and community health-care nurses, and other expert observers to provide a lens through which in-home care processes are analyzed, while also exploring how caregivers learn necessary procedures. Further, the book examines the emotional labor of caregiving, as well as the identities of caregivers and nurses who are key players in the labor process, and gives attention to the ways in which the labor is transferred from medical professionals to family caregivers.

The Social Ecology of Caregiving: Applying the Social–Ecological Model across the Life Course

“…Limited research exists on caregiving in the field of Public Health [8,[12][13][14][15]. Where it exists, it focuses on either care receivers, paid caregivers [16][17][18][19], or family caregivers [2,20] in isolation, despite calls for more integration of care networks [21,22]. One notable exception involves the bringing together of the needs of care receivers with dementia and their family caregivers [23]; however, paid caregivers are not often integrated into this work [24].…”