Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Family Care Partners Of Chronically Ill Older Adults: The Role Of Uncertainty In Illness, Jillian Pine

Dissertations

Abstract This study integrated research on family care partners of older adults and

research on uncertainty in chronic illness. Previous findings were extended by examining care partners of older adults with multiple chronic conditions and highlighting early-stage undiagnosed cognitive impairment as a uniquely unclear condition. Participants were 45 women assisting community-dwelling, earlier generation older adults with multiple chronic health conditions and a prognosis of more than six months. Online survey data were used to test the hypotheses that increased illness uncertainty would be associated with increased care partner-recipient relationship strain and increased care partner perceived stress. This study also hypothesized …

Everything Is Fine: Self-Portrait Of A Caregiver With Chronic Depression And Other Preexisting Conditions, Erin L. Scheffels

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation documents the joys and terrors of caring for my father throughout my twenties and early thirties. The story is autoethnographic and demonstrates the value of narrative research in fostering understandings of self, other, and the world around us. I call this reflexive practice of writing narrative education because as I engaged in it, I learned what it means to care, and how mental health and illness factor into the ways in which care is expressed and provided in my own relationships and beyond. In addition, throughout the story I was a member of the academic community, which makes …

“There Is No Care Here”: The Conflictual Ethics Of Kin And Bureaucratic Care In Botswana, Arielle Justine Wright

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How do people make sense of “care” when it fails? My dissertation examines the ethical debates that are provoked by the limitations of care in the setting of home-based care and associated safety net programs in Botswana. The organization of care is negotiated across domestic and public domains, often incorporating concerns about kinship ties, dependency, and labor in the welfare state. Based on 16 months of ethnographic research, I demonstrate that the ethical evaluation of care varies between differently-positioned stakeholders engaged in providing chronic care. Economic conditions and socio-political ideologies shape the ethics of care by way of setting the …

Fathers’ Caregiving In Fragile Families: Variation By Family Contexts, Gender Ideology, Race And Ethnicity, Rachel Teressa Macfarlane

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, I explore factors that predict fathers’ caregiving for children up to five years old. I study the role of social contexts in fathers’ caregiving trajectories for their young children, including family dynamics and parent’s gender ideology, across ethnoracial groups. I use OLS regressions to investigate how fathers’ early caregiving experiences, their linked-lives with others, and their attitudes about the fatherhood role predict later caregiving for their children, and how those patterns very between families with different ethnoracial backgrounds. I use summed averages of itemized caregiving by fathers, rather than proxy …

African American Women Caring For Loved Ones With Alzheimer's Disease And Dementia, Lisa M. Forbes

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

In 2016, a dramatic shift occurred in demographics in the United States because the oldest people in the baby boomer generation, which consists of people born between 1946 and 1964, reached age 65. The larger aging population and longer lifespans have produced an increased need for care and services. There are an estimated 5.4 million Americans of varying ages living with a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Diagnoses of Alzheimer's disease are more prevalent among African Americans than other ethnicities. With little research found on culturally appropriate interventions for specific ethnic groups, a more detailed review of the …