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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Making the best of it: themes of meaning among informal caregivers to the elderly | | Author(s) | Anne E Noonan, Sharon L Tennstedt, Freda G Rebelsky |
| Journal title | Journal of Aging Studies, vol 10, no 4, Winter 1996 |
| Pages | pp 313-328 |
| Keywords | Family care ; Stress ; Social roles ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Interviews with 48 informal caregivers, drawn from the Massachusetts Elder Health Project, an ongoing longitudinal study of community-residing older people, indicate that the concept of caregiver meaning can help explain why many caregivers persevere in their roles despite the stress involved. Several themes of caregiver meaning were found: gratification and satisfaction with the caregiver role, a sense of family responsibility/reciprocity, the friendship and company which caregiving provided, and a commitment to `doing what needs to be done'. Less frequently utilised themes were: having a caring personality, and experiencing growth and an improved relationship with the older person. These themes echo the complexity of caregiver meaning reported in the literature to date, and two related interpretations of that complexity are posited: that meaning has both an emotional and a cognitive component, and that there are two different dynamics operating - searching for meaning and finding meaning. (AKM). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980423241 A |
| Classmark | P6:SJ: QNH: TM5: 3J: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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