No Family, No State: Older adults’ strategies for informal caregiving in a neoliberal political economy

• In Event: Aging and the Life Course Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 4: Family Caregiving

Abstract

Aging with dignity in the US requires planning for both financial and logistical hurdles. Drawing on two-and-a-half years of ethnographic data and 77 in-depth interviews with older adults and care partners, this paper examines how older adults grappled with the limits of the US elder care structure during the care planning process. I find that as they planned for future care, even privileged older adults realized that their desires for aging did not align with available care options. To address this discrepancy between desire and reality, the older adults in my study drew on seemingly contradictory cultural logics as they made decisions around future care. The logic of independence helped them navigate available care options, while the logic of interdependence helped them build new ways to meet their anticipated care needs. Within this tension, I show how older adults strategized to create pathways for community-based informal care as they worked to remain independent from state and family support in old age. My findings highlight ways that older adults came together to plan for care at a local senior center and in their neighborhoods, hoping to maintain their independence by leaning on interdependent community care.

Author

• Erica Janko, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill