Divorce, remarriage affect beliefs about who should care for aging relatives

The topic of caregiving and playing a role that almost all of us will be thrust into at some point in our lives is a nuanced one. A couple months ago, we talked about the overwhelming pressure put on females to play the role of caregiver, and the even greater incidences of senior female spouses who are forced to shoulder the bulk of the burden.

Yet another wrinkle is added to the tapestry as we delve deeper - what about broken marriages and families? How does that impact how the roles of caregiving are dolled out and taken responsibility for?

An interesting post in the News Medical blog today shed a bit of light into this question. With rates of families affected by divorce and remarriage continually rising, Lawrence Ganong, a professor and co-chair in the MU Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Human Environmental Sciences (HES), studied how divorce and remarriage affect beliefs about who should care for aging relatives.

He found that the quality of relationships, past habits of helping each other with familial responsibilities, and access to resources heavily impact decisions about who cares for parents and stepparents.

What are your thoughts in regards to this? Do you have any personal insight into how divorce or changing family dynamics affected caregiving decisions in your family moving forward?  Drop us a line here at the Care To Know Centre and enter the conversation - perhaps you can help another family newly grappling with these questions.