Expectations Associated with the Informal Care of Older Generations

• Main Author: Guadalupe, Sónia
• Publication Date: 2012
• Other Authors: Deus, Andreia, Daniel, Fernanda
• Format: Conference object
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Download full: http://repositorio.ismt.pt/handle/123456789/35
• topic: Gerações mais velhas - Older generations; Serviço Social - Social Work

The informal care between generations deal with the important challenge of reconciling family life with the demands of professional life, and reveals how important it is to acknowledge the expectations of adults facing the eventual need of caring of older generations, by understanding and analyzing the differences in phratries, comparing single sons/daughters and sons/daughters in phratries. This paper presents a prospective, transversal and quantitative study, using an inquiry to data collecting by indirect administration. The sample of this study is constituted by Portuguese adults aged between 25 and 65, no caregivers, having unless one of the parents alive. We had 186 participants with an average age of 32 years old, the majority of this inquires where women (88%), with high level education (91%). The results indicate that all pointed love and tenderness as the most important motive for caring. The only sons/daughters previously see an economic difficulty and ponder a major source for external resources in opposite to the members of phratries that prefer a strategy of exclusivity. The domestic routines, the leisure routines and productivity at work are the main problems in their lives that they imagine that could be affected. We understand that the option for caring can’t penalize families. To anticipate eventual difficulties during the live cycle, the families should be stimulated of thinking how to conciliate their lives with the eventual needs of informal caring for the oldest. Social Work should promote the responsibility that the public politics presented about this subject, such as for the definition, amplification of programs that give an effective response to the needs of the dependents, the caregivers and families.