Exploring care, obligation and expectations among family generations using constructivist grounded theory

The Changing Generations project is a qualitative study engaging 100 men and women across the age and socio-economic spectrums to explore their experiences, practices and understandings of solidarity at family (and societal) level in Ireland. It provides an opportunity to understand changing perspectives on obligation, duty and expectations relating to the care of older family members. The study adopts Charmaz’s (2006, 2008) constructivist Grounded Theory method to facilitate an inductive-abductive reconceptualisation of obligations and expectations around meeting care needs in older age. The study provides for multi-generational understandings as the sample includes grandparents, parents and grandchildren, as well as people who have no children. Emerging themes include (1) low expectations of informal care among the older family generation, arising from perceptions of the pressures of work and family rearing for adult children; (2) persisting centrality of class and gender in shaping practices of caring, at the cost of limiting education and employment opportunities among young women from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds; (3) ‘Care resistance’ by older adults who feel they have been ‘put into a cared-for role’ against their own wishes; and (4) ‘care planning’ by well-resourced older adults who expect little or no care from their adult children, and have little faith in the welfare state’s capacity to meet care needs in old age. This paper will place our analysis in conversation with those of Bengston (2001), Ungerson (2005) and Guberman et al (2011) to consider the interplay of structural, relational and selfmaking processes in care practices and expectations.