Cultures of care in aging

Care for elderly persons has many facets and is influenced by many factors of the care-dependent person, the care giver(s) and the micro-, and macro-social context. A co-operation of multiple disciplines is required to better understand phenomena of elder care and to act adequately in this field. This is even more urgent given the increasing population aging and the impending gaps between demand and supply of care. The present book provides a first substantive integration of knowledge from geropsychology, other gerosciences, and cultural psychologies to reach these goals —through a multi-disciplinary and international cast of authors. Macro-social context—including demographic, historical, political, normative, and other cultural factors—turned out to open and limit the available options for individual care giving and receipt and shapes how these issues are experienced by the participants in elder care. Elder care is shown to be far more complex than previously thought, because its consequences extend beyond single care givers to multigenerational caring families. Thinking, feeling and acting in relation to care dependency, caregiving and care receipt emerged as being influenced by multiple individual and social level factors. Future issues of elder care are seen as being shaped to a large extent by macro level factors such as population aging, social trends in job and family life, and development of assistive technologies. All this has far reaching implications for ensuring quality of care and the life quality on part of care recipients and care providers and for the coherence of social communities