Siblings and the Responsibility of Parent Care

Siblings aren’t very good at sharing. Especially when it comes to sharing the responsibility of taking care of elderly parents.

Berit Ingersoll-Dayton, Margaret Neal, Jung-Hwa Ha, and Leslie Hammer in their article “Redressing Inequity in Parent Care Among Siblings” found  when siblings take care of their elderly parents,one sibling tends to do the majority of providing care for their parents. Often because society assumes that women are “naturally” better caregivers because of their roles as women, female siblings are the primary caregivers of elderly parents. This excuses male siblings lack of involvement because females are thought to be better caretakers.

When there is an unequal share of the work, siblings feel conflicting emotions.  The sibling who is doing the majority of the work  feels overwhelmed and angry toward their siblings who aren’t helping. The other siblings can feel guilty that they are not doing enough work. Often this unequal division of labor will lead to tensions in the family and siblings will attempt to make the work more equal.

There are two ways of making work equal, actual equity and psychological equity. An example of actual equity is when  one sibling does the physical care while another provides financial care for the parent. While the siblings are not doing the same work, it is viewed as a fair trade because both are giving up something to help take care of their parents. They are both contributing to the care of their parents. However, when a sibling doesn’t live up to their side of the bargain, it causes more tension in the family and makes problems worse.

With psychological equity, siblings take into account many more related factors when judging the involvement of each sibling. For example, siblings may think about factors of employment status, how close geographically siblings are to the parent, or the personality of the siblings before deciding who should be primary caregiver or how much care a family member should give. Believing women to better caregivers than men is also an example of psychological equity. This often very complex with multiple factors weighed against one another. Often this is used to excuse family members who don’t help out, but it does attempt to address inequality in caregiving. 

It is important for siblings to have honest conversations about what to do with elderly parents and how to divide the work fairly among siblings. By being upfront and honest about their individual feelings, siblings can work out possible solutions well before caregiving actually starts. It’s not a fun conversation to have, but it can help to stop future fighting between siblings about caregiving.

Refugee Experience in Minnesota

By Lauren Kross

The article “Culture, Structure, and the Refugee Experience in Somali Immigrant Family Transformation” by Elizabeth Heger Boyle and Ahmed Ali discusses the Somali refugee experience in Minnesota. The authors did in-depth interviews with families living in the Twin Cities Metro Area because that is the highest concentration of Somali refuges in the United States (Boyle 51). Interviewees were recruited at places like conferences, shopping malls, and ESL classes and asked questions ranging from topics of family life to religion.

The researchers found that life in the United States greatly differed from that of Somalia. Two areas that they found drastic changes were economic opportunities and how money affects daily life and the influence of American values, beliefs, and culture on daily life and interactions.

Some discoveries that the researchers found through interviewing refugees were:

• ·      Family structure moved from a lot of members, including extended family members like Grandparents and community members, to traditional American family structure, including parents and children only
• ·      Families were more likely to separate and function as single families
• ·      Fewer arranged marriages were occurring because of new cultural values about marriage
• ·      Stress levels in families increased and some participants said that family life in America was not as satisfying as family life in Africa
• ·      A sense of loss is felt because the extended family members are no longer there to help with the household
• ·      Family in the United States is more private and isolated
• ·      In Africa, there was a fear of the family if a mistake was made or the couple was fighting but in the United States, there is a fear of the government and legal action
• ·      Many refugees are forced to work low paid service work because oversees degrees are not valued in the United States, refugees do not have as many networks for job searching, and discrimination against refugees

There is also a population of Somali refugees and immigrants in Mankato, Minnesota. One resource that can help refugees living in Mankato is the YWCA-Mankato. I have volunteered with this organization for the past year. It has impacted my experience as a community member of Mankato and has exposed me to the different cultures found within this area. As a Ready to Learn Volunteer, I've been able to work with refugee and immigrant families in the community. Although a large part of my role as a volunteer is to teach the children and help prepare them for Kindergarten, another part is helping the families navigate life in America. The article by Boyle and Ali provided insight to what these families are going through and allowed me to understand the Somali culture and the transition to American culture better. The information presented in this article will be carried with me as I continue to volunteer with the YWCA-Mankato and families in the community. 

Programs offered by the YWCA include:

• The Walking in Two Worlds program is for refugee and immigrant women which allows women to connect with other women going through a similar experience, introduce women to the community, and allows the women to better understand American culture and language. 
• Ready to Learn Program helps children of refugee and immigrant families prepare for Kindergarten and/or Pre-school. 

More information on these programs and others by the YWCA-Mankato can be found at: http://www.mankatoywca.org/

White Lesbian Couples Adopting Racial/Ethnic Minority Children

White Lesbian Couples Adopting Racial/Ethnic Minority Children

Article by: Hannah Richardson and Abbie Goldberg

Blog by: Abby Haak

The amount of white parents adopting racial or ethnic minority children has increased in the United States, partly because of the large amount of racial/ethnic minority children who need to be adopted (Richardson and Goldberg, 2010). Research suggests that compared to heterosexual couples, lesbian couples are more open to adopting a child who is of a different race than they are. Society often thinks that lesbian mother families are not acceptable because they do not have a male parent, even though research has shown that lesbian parents provide loving, stable homes for their children. 

Lesbian couples who adopt racial/ethnic minority children face multiple stigmas based on belonging to a sexual minority identity, being adoptive families, and having a multiracial family. These stigmas are what Richardson and Goldberg (2010) wanted to research.

Richardson and Goldberg (2010) also wanted to look into the idea of White parents who are “color-blind”. In this sense, being color-blind means that a parent believes that race won’t be a problem for their kids, which could lead to these parents overlooking challenges that their kids COULD face because of their race. Richardson and Goldberg (2010) interviewed 20 lesbian couples who identified as White and who had adopted children who were ethnic/racial minorities. The lesbians were financially secure, well educated, and had never adopted before.  If you are interested in reading a similar study, click this link!

The researchers of this study found that the majority of the lesbian parents assumed that they would face some discrimination because of their sexual identities and their adoptive children.  Many of the women were afraid that their children would face discrimination in schools or in their communities, not only because of their minority race/ethnicity, but also because of the sexual identity of their mothers. An interesting finding of this study was that some of the mothers used their White Privilege to their advantage (that is, they weren’t color-blind and they acknowledged differences in race). 

Three months after adoption, the same lesbian couples were interviewed again. This time, the parents indicated that they HAD indeed experienced some form of discrimination, noting that they were often more discriminated against because they had children of a different race, and less because of their sexual identities. Despite these difficulties, most of the women also indicated that they had found support within their communities. By acknowledging their multiple identities, these families were able to “raise their children with a greater awareness and openness to difference” (Richardson and Goldberg, 2010, p. 351).