The Impact of Neighbors, Families, and Friends

     One important change that has occurred during the last 50 or so years is the desire for age generations to have their own homes rather than live in more cost effective extended family arrangements. This desire is labeled “intimacy at a distance.” Most older American families “don’t want to live with their children because if they did, they would lose some of the independence they prize” (Cherlin, 2005, p. 332).

              This combination of affection and independence wasn’t available

               to most elderly persons a generation or two ago. They want affection

               and respect from their children and grandchildren, but they do not

               want to be obligated to them (p. 333).

    Although extended families living in the same residence are rare, older and younger generations do give each other assistance as needed. Older members may give financial assistance to their children (providing that they do have the resources to do so) and their children may “give more personal support, such as comfort or care during illness” (Cherlin, 2005, p. 345).      

    However, it would be an error to assume that all older adults have children or grandchildren to take care of them in their older years. One example of this is found among some of those who lived during the Great Depression. According to Cherlin (2005), many people who were of marriageable age during the Great Depression [1929-1941] either had to postpone marriage altogether or they “never had the opportunity to have children. As a result, lifetime childlessness was more common among women who reached their peak childbearing years in the 1930s than in any other generation of women in the twentieth century” (p. 63).

     Other examples would include those elderly who outlived their children, those who did not have children by choice or by infertility, those who never got married at any time during their life, and those who are estranged from their children. Being estranged from one’s children is more common among men who have divorced (Cherlin, 2005, p.506).

     For some, there is also the possibility that they do not have living siblings, aunts and uncles, or other relatives who are in a position to help them in their old age.    

     Other examples of older adults who may not have anyone to care for them include individuals who have been very private and isolated from their neighbors. During the years that I volunteered to deliver Meals on Wheels in Salt Lake County, a man was “discovered” lying on the sidewalk of a small lane just outside of his very old home. The wood home was actually leaning on the neighbor’s house to the west and was in such deplorable condition that it had to be condemned. His mentally retarded son had been helping him for years but had left him. In desperation he had crawled out of the house to get help. Somehow the neighbors were surprised at finding him, as if they thought no one lived in the house. He truly had been lost to them years before. He died the day after he was discovered.

    This example helps to illustrate how difficult it is to research the amount of care being provided to older adults by informal systems such as family and neighbors. Researchers often must estimate the amount of care received from accessible sample groups. Gaining access is troublesome, as our University of Utah Gerontology faculty discovered in 1992. As the Project Coordinator, my goal was to try to convince adult care givers of Alzheimer’s patients to allow researchers to come into their homes and ask about their experiences. But how was I to find such care givers?

     We decided that we would work with the Utah Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and use the list of caregivers to older persons which they had gathered over the years. For some areas of the state, they allowed me to work at their Salt Lake City, Utah office and view their lists of adult caregivers. However, not all of the subchapters allowed such access. I was not allowed direct access to any of the caregiver lists outside of the metropolitan areas of Ogden through Provo (in Utah County; south of Salt Lake County). For all others, I was only allowed to send packets to the local subchapters, and they decided who they would give them out to. The result was an uncontrolled sampling of those areas. Taken together with the fact that we worked off some of the names from the known lists, the research had limitations based upon the sampling techniques.

    Furthermore, just over half of the caregivers on the lists refused our invitation. The most prominent reason for not allowing the interview was that they simply did not have time. The second most frequent denial was based on the strain that they already felt; to talk about the situation would make it harder to bear.

     Nevertheless, our research and those of others have produced some initial findings of some of the impacts that informal systems may have on the lives of elderly Americans. In the research that done at the University of Utah on the caregivers to frail elderly, we found that respite time for the caregiver could be of great importance to the health and well being of the caregiver. However, what the caregiver chose to do during that time off from their responsibilities varied greatly among our study group. The apparent key to the value of their respite time was that the caregiver was freed to do something that they “enjoyed.” That concept of enjoyment ranged from sleeping, reading, working at a job they loved, or even going to give care to someone else! It was found that if they did not enjoy what they did during respite time, the benefit was significantly lessened, no matter what activity they were engaged in.

     It must be noted, however, that most of the research has been done on the frail elderly, as opposed to all people over 60 years of age. Most of the care given to the frail elderly is provided by family members with the world-wide estimate of such care provided from family members being between 75% and 89% depending upon the country (Quadagno, 2002). Spouses, especially women, are most likely to give care to their husbands. On page 338 of Quadagno’s text (2002), it states that 23% of care for the benefit of the frail elderly was provided by wives while 13% was provided by husbands. The daughters, especially the eldest daughter, was the family member who was the most likely to give personal care to the frail elderly. According to Quadagno, 80 to 90% of American caregivers are daughters (p. 338).