Family history and caregiving: A symbolic interaction perspective

Twenty percent of the United States population will be over the age of sixty-five by the year 2025. The use of familial caregivers by older adults will increase as society ages. The purpose of this study was to examine historical communication/interaction patterns of families in which an adult child or spouse is currently serving, or has served, in a caregiving role for an aging parent(s) or marital partner--specifically those patterns that may be linked to current reciprocal responses of positive interaction or to those of abuse of the carereceiver. Using Symbolic Interaction as a framework for studying intergenerational transmission of behavior, and using Manis and Meltzer\u27s (1978) seven core symbolic interaction propositions to evaluate results, twenty-four subjects, twelve adult children caregivers, and twelve spousal caregivers were interviewed to determine if historical family communication/interaction may symbolically transfer to current caregiver responses. Results indicated that two of twelve adult children serving as primary family caregivers used emotional abuse and one of twelve used physical abuse against their parent(s) who have historically abused them. No evidence of spousal abuse was found in twelve interviews of subjects who cared for marital partners even though eight of twelve participants historically came from families where communication/interaction was considered to be negative or abusive, and seven of the twelve marriages were evaluated as negative or abusive