The caregiving bind: Concealing the demands of informal care can undermine the caregiving identity

Helen Moore and Alex Gillespie

Social Science & Medicine, 2014, vol. 116, issue C, 102-109

Abstract: Disagreements and misunderstandings between informal caregivers and care-receivers have been widely reported, but the causes are unclear. The present article compares the views of people with acquired brain injury and their main informal caregivers (28 dyads, n = 56). First, we report a quantitative analysis finding that the majority of disagreements were about caregivers' identity. Caregivers saw themselves as less confident, less intelligent, more embarrassed, more independent and more overprotective than care-receivers rated them to be. Caregivers understood the care-receivers' ratings but disagreed with them' Second, we report a qualitative analysis focussing on how caregivers felt themselves to be perceived by significant others. Caregivers felt that the care-receiver, family members, the general public, health services and even friends often have negative views of them. The ‘caregiving bind’ is proposed as a cause of caregivers' negative identity. It arises when caregivers try to protect the care-receiver's identity by concealing the extent of informal care provision, with the unintended consequence of undermining the prospects of the caregiver receiving positive social recognition for the challenging work of caregiving. The caregiving bind has implications for therapy and points to the potential of friends and health services to provide caregivers with positive social recognition.

Keywords: UK; Informal care; Acquired brain injury; Disagreement; Misunderstanding; Identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614004067
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:116:y:2014:i:c:p:102-109

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.06.038

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().