Caregivers share struggles, solutions
Book Review by Marcia Z. Siegal
“Families have always cared for their elders, but our parents in old age are different than their forbears, just as we boomers are unlike previous generations of adults,” writes Paula Span, in When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions. Like other books published by Springboard Press, When the Time Comes is aimed primarily at the Boomer generation.
A longtime journalist who currently writes for The New York Times’ “New Old Age” blog, in her book Span depicts families struggling with difficult, often heart-wrenching choices about long term care and coping with the aftermath of those choices during an elder’s final years.
Today’s caregivers are often ill-informed about long-term-care options and finances, she says. They deal with elders discharged quicker and sicker from hospitals. Often, they balance caregiving with demanding jobs. Many still have child-rearing responsibilities. Others qualify as elderly themselves.
But it's not all negative. Much is made of the caregiver burden: the physical financial, and psychological tolls that caregiving can take, Span points out.
“The phenomenon called caregiver gain doesn’t appear nearly as often … but it exists,” she says, noting “Rewards also surface when caregivers talk about what they do: pride in being able to meet the challenges, feelings of competence and mastery, a sense of meaning and purpose.”
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