Care Work and Sexuality: Producing intimacy in social relations between caregivers and older adults

• In Event: Gender and Class: Privilege and Precarity

Abstract

This article examines the dimension of sexuality in caregiving work and the social relationships established between caregivers and older adults in Long-Term Care Institutions (LTCIs) in Brazil. Considering that caregiving practices are permeated by emotions, affections, moralities, and power relations, the study aims to highlight how these subjective elements are implicated in bodily contact and the construction of intimacy between those involved in caregiving practices, as well as the effects of sexuality on the formal order of work. The research methodology includes field observation in three Long-Term Care Institutions and in a training course for caregivers in the city of Rio de Janeiro; twenty-three semi-structured interviews with caregivers, older adults, health professionals, and institution managers; in addition to the review of documentary records of elderly residents. The results emphasize the presence of sexuality in the institutional context, both as an experience lived by the elderly and in the relationship between caregivers and older adults within the scope of work competencies. To deal with destabilizing situations, caregivers improvise strategies that vary according to the degree of dependency and cognitive impairment of the elderly. A delicate boundary emerges between sexual expressions considered “tolerable” or “degrading” by caregivers, who invest emotional labor to manage relationships within the realms of intimacy and bodily work. The dynamics of intimacy are also shaped by social markers of gender, race, and class, situated within specific social contexts. Formal training for the profession revealed limitations in preparing caregivers to meet these subjective demands. Within the institutional setting, elderly sexuality is silenced, treated as taboo, or medicalized.

Author

• Stephanie Natalie Burille, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro