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.
I would be hesitant to describe this research as feminist. The only aspect of this that was somewhat related to Gender and Women’s Studies was the inclusion of gender in the analysis of equity. The authors did bring up a good point about how women were seen as “natural” caregivers, therefore fitting into strict gender roles (p. 207). I wish they had elaborated more on this, especially in the focus groups! This could have been a great opportunity to see where the individuals were getting these ideas about gender roles. I was also concerned with the fact that it did not seem as though this study included any LGBT families.
ReplyDeleteDespite my qualms with the feminist position of the article, I absolutely loved the explanation of the methodology and the reasoning behind using qualitative methods. I especially liked when the authors noted that qualitative research was most appropriate for their study because of the opportunity for the participants to expand on the initial focus of the research by answering open-ended questions (p. 203). I also really appreciated the depth that the authors went into when describing how they recruited participants and the criteria that the individuals needed to fit in order to be included in the study (p. 204).
I agree with Abby Haak's comment on this article not being as feminist as others that we have read and not delving deeper into issues with the strict gender roles. I also agree that learning about how they attained their ideas of gender roles would be important, especially when researching caregiving. On page 210, the authors note that women are seen as natural caregivers and therefore they often feel guilty for not taking on a caregiving role or providing less care. Why are women seen as natural caregivers? In what ways are women portrayed as natural caregivers and in what media? Also, the word choice of natural is a little unsettling because the authors do not challenge this idea of women's natural ability to care, nurture, etc.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I really enjoyed how the researchers discussed the different terminology used throughout the article and utilized responses from the research to back up what they were stating. One example is found on page 205 when the authors are discussing imbalanced caregiving. They use an excerpt from a research participant to make clear the stress and frustration caused by imbalanced caregiving. I have heard stories from those that I know about the imbalances in caregiving and how difficult caregiving can be to take on. For this reason, I wish the authors would have provided action steps for addressing issues regarding caregiving.