Arts, Faculty of
Sociology, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Treleaven, Christina
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
University of British Columbia
Caring is complex—often framed in love, sometimes mired with obligation, guilt, stress and anxiety. Informal care is rarely a simple addition to one’s life but rather it represents a re-thinking of relationships, a re-evaluation of priorities and career direction, and an emotional journey as carers navigate issues of autonomy and independence when supporting their parents and older family members. In this integrated-article dissertation, I combine qualitative and quantitative methods to consider the broader experience of younger adult informal eldercare providers. In Chapter 2, I examine how informal eldercare providers conceptualize care and caregiving. Findings suggest that participants define care in two key ways: as assistance or activities driven by necessity, or as physical care. In Chapter 3, I examine the work/family conflict that arises for younger adult eldercare providers, and the associated reductions in work hours or limits to career advancement by turning down or choosing not to apply for promotions. My findings demonstrate that these individuals are indeed making career choices in relation to care, and that women in particular are shaping their career trajectories around their eldercare responsibilities—with the potential for long term career effects. In Chapter 4, I use theories of mental labour to analyze the experiences of informal eldercare providers in the COVID-19 pandemic. My findings highlight the salience of mental labour as an important form of eldercare, as exemplified by worries about transmission risk, the consequences of isolation, and navigating access to needed medical services during periods of lockdown or reduced interaction. My dissertation offers a glimpse into the insights and experiences of younger adult eldercare providers. I reflect the stories, experiences, and implications of informal care, conscientiously examining the relational nature of care provision. In doing so, my aim is to encourage scholars to think differently about eldercare—to expand our conception of care beyond task or time-based approaches, to consider the path-based nature of care penalties, and to acknowledge new care strategies and behaviours emerging throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
CARE CONUNDRUM: EXPERIENCES OF YOUNGER ADULT ELDERCARE PROVIDERS by Christina Treleaven M.A., Western University, 2015 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Sociology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) OCTOBER 2022 © Christina Treleaven, 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Care Conundrum: Experiences of Eldercare Among Younger Adult Carers submitted by Christina Treleaven in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology Examining Committee: Dr. Sylvia Fuller, Professor, Sociology, UBC Supervisor Dr. Elizabeth Hirsh, Professor, Sociology, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Anne Martin-Matthews, Professor, Sociology, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Deborah O’Connor, Professor, School of Social Work, UBC University Examiner Dr. Carrie Yodanis, Associate Professor, Sociology, UBC University Examiner iii Abstract Caring is complex—often framed in love, sometimes mired with obligation, guilt, stress and anxiety. Informal care is rarely a simple addition to one’s life but rather it represents a re-thinking of relationships, a re-evaluation of priorities and career direction, and an emotional journey as carers navigate issues of autonomy and independence when supporting their parents and older family members. In this integrated-article dissertation, I combine qualitative and quantitative methods to consider the broader experience of younger adult informal eldercare providers. In Chapter 2, I examine how informal eldercare providers conceptualize care and caregiving. Findings suggest that participants define care in two key ways: as assistance or activities driven by necessity, or as physical care. In Chapter 3, I examine the work/family conflict that arises for younger adult eldercare providers, and the associated reductions in work hours or limits to career advancement by turning down or choosing not to apply for promotions. My findings demonstrate that these individuals are indeed making career choices in relation to care, and that women in particular are shaping their career trajectories around their eldercare responsibilities—with the potential for long term career effects. In Chapter 4, I use theories of mental labour to analyze the experiences of informal eldercare providers in the COVID-19 pandemic. My findings highlight the salience of mental labour as an important form of eldercare, as exemplified by worries about transmission risk, the consequences of isolation, and navigating access to needed medical services during periods of lockdown or reduced interaction. My dissertation offers a glimpse into the insights and experiences of younger adult eldercare providers. I reflect the stories, experiences, and implications of informal care, conscientiously iv examining the relational nature of care provision. In doing so, my aim is to encourage scholars to think differently about eldercare—to expand our conception of care beyond task or time-based approaches, to consider the path-based nature of care penalties, and to acknowledge new care strategies and behaviours emerging throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. v Lay Summary Caring is complex—often framed in love, sometimes mired with obligation, guilt, and stress. Informal eldercare is rarely simple; it represents a re-thinking of relationships, a re-evaluation of priorities, and an emotional journey as people navigate issues of autonomy and independence when supporting their parents and older family members. Using interviews and survey data analysis, my dissertation considers the broader experiences of younger adults who provide care for their parents or grandparents. Chapter 2 explores how my study participants think about care and caregiving. Chapter 3 examines the work/family conflict that arises when balancing work and eldercare. Chapter 4 incorporates theories of mental labour to better understand and reflect the reality of providing eldercare in the COVID-19 pandemic. By reflecting the stories, experiences, and implications of informal eldercare, and conscientiously examining the relational nature of care within families, I encourage scholars to think differently about eldercare. vi Preface This dissertation is an original, unpublished, intellectual work of the author, Christina Treleaven. The fieldwork reported in Chapters 2–4 was covered by University of British Columbia Behavioural Research Ethics Board (BREB), certificate number H19-02262. The quantitative analysis presented in this paper was conducted at the Simon Fraser University Research Data Centre, which is part of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN). The services and activities provided by the SFU RDC are made possible by the financial or in-kind support of the SSHRC, the CIHR, the CFI, Statistics Canada, and the BCIRDC. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent the CRDCN's or that of its partners'. This dissertation draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. vii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary .................................................................................................................................v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... xii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xiii Land Acknowledgement ..............................................................................................................xv Dedication ................................................................................................................................... xvi Chapter 1. Introduction.................................................................................................................1 1.1 Key contributions ............................................................................................................ 4 1.2 Overview of dissertation ................................................................................................. 5 1.2.1 Conceptions of care and caregiving ........................................................................ 6 1.2.2 Navigating career decisions and care responsibilities ............................................ 6 1.2.3 Salience of mental labour in eldercare .................................................................... 7 1.3 Note on reflexivity .......................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2. Conceptualizing Care and Caregiver Identity .......................................................11 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 11 2.2 The salience of young carers in care research .............................................................. 12 2.3 Defining eldercare ......................................................................................................... 13 2.4 Theorizing caregiver identity ........................................................................................ 15 2.5 Methods......................................................................................................................... 19 2.5.1 Data ....................................................................................................................... 19 viii 2.5.2 Analytical method ................................................................................................. 21 2.6 Findings......................................................................................................................... 22 2.6.1 Conceptualizing care ............................................................................................. 22 2.6.2 Necessity as a defining characteristic of care ....................................................... 22 2.6.3 Physical care and cultural context......................................................................... 24 2.7 Nuances of caregiver self-identification ....................................................................... 26 2.7.1 Motivating factors for identifying as a caregiver .................................................. 26 2.7.2 Barriers to identifying as a caregiver .................................................................... 28 2.7.3 Negotiating market-based conceptions of care ..................................................... 30 2.7.4 Identity liminality in informal care ....................................................................... 32 2.8 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 33 2.8.1 Limitations and future research ............................................................................ 37 2.9 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 39 Chapter 3. Work and Care .........................................................................................................40 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 40 3.2 Background ................................................................................................................... 41 3.2.1 Work and eldercare ............................................................................................... 43 3.2.2 Gender and caregiving .......................................................................................... 45 3.3 Methodology ................................................................................................................. 47 3.3.1 Quantitative analysis ............................................................................................. 47 Data ................................................................................................................................... 47 Outcome variables ............................................................................................................ 48 Independent variables ....................................................................................................... 48 ix Control variable ................................................................................................................ 49 Analytical approach .......................................................................................................... 50 3.3.2 Qualitative analysis ............................................................................................... 51 3.4 Findings......................................................................................................................... 53 3.4.1 Quantitative results ............................................................................................... 53 Initial model results........................................................................................................... 55 Differences by age cohort ................................................................................................. 61 3.4.2 Qualitative findings ............................................................................................... 70 Adjustments to work hours ............................................................................................... 70 Career advancement impacts ............................................................................................ 72 Gender and work-care decision-making ........................................................................... 74 3.5 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 76 3.5.1 Limitations ............................................................................................................ 79 3.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 80 Chapter 4. Eldercare and Mental Labour in the COVID-19 Pandemic .................................81 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 81 4.2 Conceptualizing eldercare ............................................................................................. 82 4.3 COVID-19 and eldercare .............................................................................................. 84 4.4 Reflecting mental labour, emotion work, and mental load ........................................... 86 4.5 Methods......................................................................................................................... 89 4.5.1 Data ....................................................................................................................... 89 4.5.2 Analytical method ................................................................................................. 91 4.6 Findings......................................................................................................................... 92 x 4.6.1 The primacy of mental labour in the COVID-19 pandemic ................................. 93 4.6.2 Thinking work: Planning, managing, and knowing .............................................. 94 Planning and strategizing .................................................................................................. 94 Managerial thinking .......................................................................................................... 96 Knowing ............................................................................................................................ 99 4.6.3 Crisis management: Managing and anticipating needs, self-regulating, and emotion work ...................................................................................................................... 100 4.7 Discussion ................................................................................................................... 103 4.7.1 Limitations .......................................................................................................... 108 4.8 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 109 Chapter 5. Conclusion ...............................................................................................................110 5.1 Overview of key findings from empirical chapters .................................................... 111 5.1.1 Conceptions of care and caregiving .................................................................... 111 5.1.2 Navigating career decisions and responsibilities ................................................ 113 5.1.3 Salience of mental labour in eldercare ................................................................ 114 5.2 Contribution of findings .............................................................................................. 115 5.2.1 Theoretical contributions .................................................................................... 115 5.2.2 Contributions to public policy and resource development ................................. 117 5.3 Implications of research .............................................................................................. 118 5.4 Limitations of research ............................................................................................... 119 5.5 Avenues for future research ........................................................................................ 120 5.6 Closing Statement ....................................................................................................... 122 References ...................................................................................................................................123 xi Appendices ..................................................................................................................................140 Appendix A ............................................................................................................................. 140 xii List of Tables Table 2.1 Respondent demographics ............................................................................................ 21 Table 3.1 Descriptive statistics ..................................................................................................... 53 Table 3.2 Differences in work hours for eldercare providers ....................................................... 57 Table 3.3 Differences in career advancement for eldercare providers ......................................... 60 Table 3.4 Adjustments to work hours by age cohort .................................................................... 64 Table 3.5 Adjustments to career advancement impacts by age cohort ......................................... 67 Table 4.1 Coding categories (adapted from Robertson et al., 2019, p.190) ................................. 91 xiii Acknowledgements I am grateful to the participants in this study for sharing their stories with me. I am humbled by their honesty, vulnerability, and trust. This work would not be possible without their willingness to discuss their lives with me. Truly, it takes a village to complete a dissertation. I have received immense support from so many, and I will forever be grateful to each and every person who has been part of this journey with me. Thank you to the faculty and staff in the Department of Sociology at UBC, whose work and guidance has provided me with the skills and tools to achieve career goals I hardly dreamed possible. A special thanks to May Chan, the Graduate Advisor, for her incredible care of all the grad students. I am also grateful to Dennis Ma and the SFU RDC for helping me as I navigated the data analysis and release process, particularly through Covid. My heartfelt thanks to Dr. Sylvia Fuller for her guidance, support, leadership, and kindness over the years. From the first day that I met Sylvia, at the SFU RDC one summer day in 2015, she was immediately focused on understanding and supporting my scholarly and career goals. Sylvia has consistently provided opportunities to help me develop my skills in practical ways, keeping many options open for me and ensuring that I had access to funding to complete my studies. Every aspect of my work improved thanks to her guidance and conscientious feedback. I count myself as lucky to have had such a wonderful and supportive supervisor, and I look forward to collaborating in the future. I remain grateful to my committee members, Dr. Anne Martin-Matthews and Dr. Beth Hirsh, both of whom have offered important insights and feedback on my work as well as provided xiv helpful guidance and support throughout my dissertation. It has been such a privilege to learn from both of these women, whose renowned scholarly expertise is matched by their genuine care for their graduate students. To my family—thank you from the bottom of my heart. There are hardly words to express how much each of you has meant to me as I have worked hard to complete this PhD. Brad, my love, you kept our family afloat and have remained my biggest cheerleader every single day. I will always be thankful for you and for the sacrifices you have made to help me see this through. Chantal, you have made it possible for me to complete this work, and I cannot thank you enough. My mother, my sisters, my extended family—thank you all for the incredible support and words of encouragement over the years. To my colleagues and peers in the UBC Sociology department—I could not have done this without you. Dr. Jennifer Adkins, my carpool buddy and friend for life, your steadfast support has meant the world to me. Knowing I would get to see you made it possible for me sit at my desk each day, even in a global pandemic, and even when everything felt too hard to keep going. Dr. Natasha Stecy-Hildebrandt, your kindness and wisdom are unparalleled. Dr. Francois Lachapelle, I am so grateful for your collaborative nature and willingness to talk theory, methods, and navigating the two together. xv Land Acknowledgement As an uninvited settler, I have written every word of this dissertation on stolen land. I wrote or resided in the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) People, the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, Qayqayt and Kwikwetlem Peoples, and the shared lands of the Stó:lō people, of Qwó:ltl'el, Leq'á:mel, Matheqwí, and Sq'éwlets, peoples of this land since time immemorial. Colonial violence and genocide made it possible for me to exist in these places. It is my responsibility to use the learnings I have had the privilege of accessing to do what I can to dismantle the systems that continue to perpetuate harm through marginalization and systemic oppression. xvi Dedication For Dr. Chantal Lemire, whose tireless generosity inspires and awes me daily, and for Dora, the light of my life.1 Chapter 1. Introduction “They’re my parents. They gave me life. They gave up things. They made sacrifices for me and I’ve had a good life because of that, so the least I can do is return the favour to them. And I would never want them to go without. I would never want them to feel like they were alone. I would never want them to feel like they couldn’t have something or do something because somebody couldn’t help them with it, right? So, I will always be their person…if I can be there to help you to do whatever, I will do it” (Alexia)* “I feel bad because I’m always so grumpy and angry. And she’ll be like, why are you so grumpy? And I can’t say, it’s because I get so annoyed with you” (Julie) Caring is complex—often framed in love, sometimes mired with obligation, guilt, stress and anxiety. As the stories and perspectives in this dissertation demonstrate, informal care is rarely a simple addition to one’s life. Instead, it represents a re-thinking of relationships, a reevaluation of priorities and career direction, and an emotional journey as carers1 navigate issues of autonomy and independence when supporting their parents. Informal eldercare presents a growing and important issue for Canadians and policy makers. Renewed focus on aging at home, both due to individual desire and to government cost-savings * All names have been changed to protect confidentiality 1 Throughout this dissertation, I use the terms carer, eldercarer, care provider, and eldercare provider interchangeably to refer to people who provide informal eldercare. Ch. 2 explicitly discusses how research participants adopt or do not adopt a “caregiver” identity, reflecting a common term that many scholars, community groups, and policy-makers use to describe those who provide care in the Canadian context. 2 measures, offloads various aspects of care onto families (Lilly, Laporte, & Coyte, 2010; Stabile, Laporte, & Coyte, 2006). Canadians ages 15 and up are increasingly providing eldercare, with many providing support to parents and grandparents at younger ages than ever before (Hardy & Omercic, 2020). Despite some government programs designed to assist aging individuals, older adults often rely on informal care provided by spouses and family members (Bauer & Sousa-Poza, 2015; Smith, 2004). Care requires time; although the vast majority of informal eldercare providers are employed, they spend, on average, 4 to 20 hours per week on eldercare duties (Calvano, 2013; Turcotte, 2013; van den Berg & Spauwen, 2006). This time commitment often comes at a cost, as employees report reduced concentration in the workplace, increased absenteeism, loss of wages, and limitations to career advancement (Gautun & Hagen, 2010; Koerin, Harrigan, & Secret, 2008). Extant scholarly research on eldercare largely focuses on middle-aged or older caregivers, but informal care responsibilities impact a wide range of individuals and age groups, with nearly 25% of youth aged 15 to 29 providing some form of eldercare (Bleakney, 2014). This trend of youth caregiving is increasing: between 1996 and 2006, Canada saw a 13% increase in the proportion of young people providing care (Chadi & Stamatopoulos, 2017). Studies of young carers represent a small, but growing, aspect of care research. A scoping review of research on youth caregivers published in 2016 found only 22 articles on the subject (Kavanaugh, Stamatopoulos, Cohen, & Zhang, 2016). Since then, scholars have been focusing more on exploring and understanding the unique challenges facing younger care providers (Boumans & Dorant, 2018; Leu, Frech, & Jung, 2018; Stamatopoulos, 2018). 3 Stamatopolous (2015) provided the first comprehensive trend analysis of youth involvement in care in Canada, finding that not only have young care providers increased in number since the mid-nineties, but changing socio-demographic conditions (for example, an aging population, a growing proportion of care provided by family members, women’s increased labour market participation, more children born to older parents, and the proliferation of multi-generational households) will likely continue to drive this young caregiver trend. Nor is Canada alone in this phenomenon; recent research from Switzerland (Leu et al., 2018) and the Netherlands (Boumans & Dorant, 2018) highlights that young and younger adult carers represent key care providers whose experiences remain understudied and their needs unsupported. As scholars begin to explore this area of research, studies on younger adult carers—individuals in their 20s to mid-40s—offer additional evidence that age and life course transitions shape care experiences and outcomes (McLaughlin, Greenfield, Hasche, & De Fries, 2019). As such, understanding the consequences of eldercare for younger adult carers is very important, particularly as the proportions of the population that both require and provide care are increasing rapidly. This cohort of care providers bridges the gap between younger and older carers, and the present study contributes to extant literature by capturing the experiences of those not young enough to be young caregivers, and yet not quite middle-aged. Moreover, this study offers a timely exploration of younger adult carer experiences in the midst of global crises. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the associated public health lockdowns beginning in March 2020, have both impacted and shifted caregiving. With schools and workplaces closed, limited access to medical services, and reduced interpersonal contact (through a focus on social and physical distancing as mechanisms to reduce exposure), care 4 providers have had to take on new and different duties and responsibilities (Raile, Raile, Parker, Shanahan, & Haines, 2021). Eldercare providers have experienced disruptions to care in terms of type and frequency of responsibilities as well as increased anxiety (Irani, Niyomyart, & Zauszniewski, 2021; Park, 2021; Truskinovsky, Finlay, & Kobayashi, 2021). Given the new context, there remains much to learn about the implications of the pandemic for younger adult eldercare providers in their 20s to mid-40s. My dissertation examines the experiences of informal eldercare provision among younger adult carers, focusing on three interrelated questions: 1) How do younger adult carers understand, conceptualize, and frame care and caregiving? 2) How does eldercare provision shape career development and decision-making for younger adult carers? 3) How have younger adult carers navigated care provision during the COVID-19 pandemic? I use a multi methods approach to explore my research questions, relying on 29 semi-structured interviews as well as quantitative data analysis using Cycle 32 of the Canadian General Social Survey, Caregiving and Care Receiving. In Chapters 2 and 4, I analyze interview data, while Chapter 3 incorporates both interview data and survey data to reflect the experiences of younger adult eldercare providers. 1.1 Key contributions My findings encourage scholars to think differently about eldercare—to expand our conception of care beyond task or time-based approaches, to consider the path-based nature of care 5 penalties, and to acknowledge new care strategies and behaviours emerging throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Studying younger adult carers not only enhances our understanding of their unique needs, but also expands theory development by applying sociological concepts in new and different contexts. By analyzing younger adult carers’ lived experience of providing eldercare, my dissertation expands our understanding of care: I provide insight into conceptions of care and barriers to caregiver identity adoption among younger carers; I demonstrate that care shapes career-decision making for younger adults carers; and I extend the use of the concept of mental labour to eldercare provision, both identifying how mental labour manifests for eldercarers during the COVID-19 pandemic and refining our understandings of this concept by elucidating the interrelated nature of mental labour and emotion work. Through three integrated articles, presented as Chapters 2–4 of this dissertation, I explore what it means to provide care earlier in the life course, and inform not only scholarly research but also policy and resource development. 1.2 Overview of dissertation I consider the broader experience of younger adult informal eldercare providers in three integrated articles. In Chapter 2, I investigate conceptions of care and caregiving, exploring how younger adult carers think about the concept of care and the factors that motivate or prevent them from adopting a caregiver identity. In Chapter 3, I examine how younger adult carers navigate career decisions in relation to care responsibilities. Chapter 4 builds upon the two previous Chapters, as I consider the experience of providing care during the COVID-19 pandemic and identify the salience of mental labour for younger adult eldercare providers, particularly in times of crisis. 6 1.2.1 Conceptions of care and caregiving Informal eldercare represents an important and growing priority for Canadians of all ages. With changing demographics and an increasing societal reliance on offloading care from the medical system, people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are increasingly assisting their parents with instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) and in some cases activities of daily living (ADLs). As more people take on informal eldercare responsibilities at younger ages or earlier in the life course, how ‘care’ and ‘caregiver’ status are understood may shift. In this chapter, I examine how younger adult informal eldercare providers conceptualize care and caregiving. Findings suggest that participants define care in two key ways: as assistance or activities driven by necessity, or as physical care. Adopting the term ‘caregiver’, however, is more complex and barriers to self-identifying as a caregiver include perceiving the term as related to paid or full-time work (formal care) or a sense of familial responsibility and reciprocity. My findings reinforce that how care is defined can affect who is deemed to provide it, with policy implications for caregiver enumeration and resources. If younger adult eldercare providers do not readily identify as caregivers, they may be less likely to participate in studies or access much-needed support. 1.2.2 Navigating career decisions and care responsibilities The limited research on younger adult carers—people in their 20s to mid-40s—suggests that carers experience challenges when balancing career and care. Younger adult eldercare providers frequently make career-related decisions based on navigating their care responsibilities, sometimes facing difficult decisions that can result in fundamental shifts in career trajectory. I take a multi-methods approach, combining survey data with semi-structured interviews, to study career outcomes and care-related decision-making among younger adult-carers. Using a multi 7 methods approach that combines quantitative and qualitative data analysis, I examine the job impacts of eldercare in terms of reductions in work hours or limits to career advancement by turning down or choosing not to apply for promotions. I find that younger adult carers are as likely as older carers to make adjustments to work hours and career advancement due to care responsibilities (despite the potentially more negative consequences of such choices for those earlier in their careers). My qualitative findings demonstrate that caregiving responsibilities can impact job selection and limit promotion opportunities. This is particularly so for highly educated women, who lose opportunities due to geographic constraints that require them to stay closer to their family members for whom they provide care. My findings also show that women may shape their career trajectories around their eldercare responsibilities—a pattern not observed for men in this study—with the potential for long term effects such as underemployment. By taking a mixed-methods approach, my results reinforce the path-dependent nature of career decision-making and the a priori choices made that may impact quantitative results. In doing so, my findings highlight the limitations of using cross-sectional survey methods alone for studying the career impacts of eldercare. 1.2.3 Salience of mental labour in eldercare Mental labour is a burgeoning concept in family care research that refers to the (often invisible) thinking, planning and coordinating activities supporting care work. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted dramatic shifts in the mechanics and logistics of care, bringing to light the interplay of mental labour and emotion work in new and unique contexts, such as eldercare; the pandemic has brought hitherto underrecognized forms of labour into sharper focus. I use theories of mental labour to analyze the experiences of informal eldercare providers. My findings highlight the 8 salience of mental labour as an important form of eldercare, as exemplified by worries about transmission risk, the consequences of isolation, and navigating access to needed medical services during periods of lockdown or reduced interaction. The combination of mental labour and emotion work among informal eldercare providers during the pandemic extends our understanding of how carers navigate issues of autonomy and independence with their parents and grandparents in crisis situations. 1.3 Note on reflexivity As I write this, I have already spoken to my mother on the phone twice today. Throughout my PhD, I have provided care and support to my mother as she has dealt with challenges and issues related to aging and health. My interest in eldercare research was initially sparked by a moment of caregiving, when I had driven my mother to an ophthalmologist appointment and realized that every patient seemed to be accompanied by a younger person who was there in the middle of a typical workday—10:00 am on a Thursday morning. It struck me that many other people were navigating this challenge as well, and I wondered how they managed their employment and care responsibilities. For myself, it sometimes felt hard to ask for time off again, or to take off in the middle of the day because of an urgent need, especially when I was trying to make progress in my career and wanted to be perceived as committed and driven. I reflected frequently on the emotional complexity of caregiving—the love behind care, the fun my mother and I have, the depth of relationship we could access because of the vulnerability in receiving care, and the frustration, stress, resentment and guilt I felt on occasion when I had to make changes to my work and life to accommodate care. These factors shaped and influenced my choice to research this topic as well as my interview guide design and my interpretation of responses. 9 As an insider, I was able to connect with participants because, despite the unique characteristics of our respective experiences, I had an understanding of some of the unspoken or challenging aspects of care. For example, my personal experience with eldercare helped to create space for participants to talk openly about feelings and emotions that can be deemed ‘unacceptable’ in terms of broader social norms. Resentment, anger, and stress are often accompanied by guilt because as carers (and particularly women) many of us feel as though we should be caring out of love—we should want to help, want to give up our time, and accept that we do not put ourselves, our lives, or even our careers first. However, as with any insider position, there may be aspects to eldercare that are simply so normalized for me that I myself do not see them or perceive them as worthy of analysis. When I asked interviewees why they chose to participate in the study, several spoke about how meaningful and important this work is to them. Similar to my desire to study the subject, many participants were interested in sharing their stories in hopes that they could contribute to a conversation about something that matters to them but that we rarely talk about. The more we talk about this, the more we can learn about care and what it means—how we study it, and how it impacts our lives, our dreams, and our goals. When I reflect on my position in relation to this work, it is at least in part a form of feminist activism: my hope is that my dissertation can, even in some small way, help to broaden our understanding of care work, acknowledge its impacts to younger adult carers, and explore the ways in which people navigate complex emotions and nuances in their efforts to support others. “I think, to me, what feels really interesting about this being a part of my collection of life experience is that it has shaped my life in ways that I did not 10 anticipate…I do feel like there were points in time where it’s like…you could’ve chosen not to do this…but then you wouldn’t be the kind of person that you want to be, right?” (Lisa) 11 Chapter 2. Conceptualizing Care and Caregiver Identity 2.1 Introduction Demographic data consistently shows that informal eldercare represents a growing and pertinent societal challenge, with 1 in 4 Canadians providing assistance to friends or family members for reasons related to aging or long-term disability (Arriagada, 2020). Despite some government programs designed to assist aging individuals, older adults often rely on informal care provided by spouses and family members (Bauer & Sousa-Poza, 2015; Smith, 2004). A renewed focus on aging at home, both due to individual desire and to government cost-savings measures, offloads various aspects of care onto families (Lilly et al., 2010; Stabile et al., 2006). The COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated eldercare provision, with reduced access to health services including in-home care and support and an associated increase in somatic symptoms such as stress and anxiety among informal carers (Park, 2021).2 Much of the extant research on informal care focuses on the experiences, attitudes, and behaviours of middle-aged or older caregivers, but a wide range of individuals and age groups—including nearly 25% of youth aged 15 to 29—provide care in various capacity for parents, grandparents or siblings (Bleakney, 2014). This trend of youth caregiving is increasing: between 1996 and 2006, Canada saw a 13% increase in the proportion of young people providing care (Chadi & Stamatopoulos, 2017). While individuals aged 45-64 remain the most likely to act as caregivers (Arriagada, 2020), an aging population, a steadily rising age of first-time motherhood (Provencher, Milan, Hallman, & D’Aoust, 2018) and a continued reliance on offloading 2 Further discussion of the exacerbated need for and complexities of informal care provision in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic features in subsequent papers of this dissertation. 12 responsibility from the healthcare system mean that more people are providing eldercare at earlier stages of the life course. One-fifth to one-quarter of Canadians aged 15-45 act specifically as informal eldercare providers (Arriagada, 2020). But what does it mean to be a caregiver? What factors shape our understanding of care and the adoption of a caregiver identity? As more and more people transition into roles of informal caregiving, often at earlier stages of the life course than previous research has investigated, scholars must grapple with the complexities and nuances of such concepts and terminology. Pertinent questions arise with regard to the porous boundaries of caregiver identification, both in terms of how younger adult carers understand care, as well as how, when and why they may—or may not—identify as caregivers, when performing eldercare. Much of the research on caregiver identity development has explored the processes through which individuals begin to self-identify as caregivers, often focusing on older age cohorts. I examine conceptions of care through the lens of younger adult informal care providers (in their 20s to mid-40s), as well as the mechanisms and barriers that may prevent such individuals from adopting a caregiver identity. In doing so, my results inform both scholarly approaches to carer identity research as well as resource development considerations for younger adult carers. 2.2 The salience of young carers in care research Studies of young caregivers represent a small, but growing, aspect of care research (D’Amen, Socci, & Santini, 2021; Dellmann-Jenkins, Blankemeyer, & Pinkard, 2001; Kavanaugh et al., 2016; Stamatopoulos, 2015). D’Amen et al’s (2021) scoping review demonstrates a distinction in the scholarship between young caregivers (aged up to around 25 years old) and young adult caregivers (aged 18 to around 40 years old). As scholarly focus turns to young carers in general, 13 much of the initial research has examined the youngest cohorts—those under 25 years of age (Arnett 2000; Becker 2008; Boumans and Dorant, 2018; Leu, Frech and Jung, 2018; Stamatopoulos, 2018). Younger adult caregivers, not young enough to be young caregivers, and yet not quite middle-aged, remain underrepresented in current research (Koumoutzis, Cichy, Dellmann-Jenkins, & Blankemeyer, 2021). Nevertheless, a growing body of research demonstrates the real and definite impacts of caregiving on financial stability (Koumoutzis et al., 2021), career goals (Dellmann-Jenkins et al., 2001; Skira, 2015), and caregiver strain (McLaughlin et al., 2019) for younger adult carers. The increasingly intergenerational nature of care alongside neoliberal healthcare imperatives creates the possibility that people will provide multiple forms of care throughout their lives and over the life course. Patterson & Margolis (2019) find “the biggest squeezes for men and women occurring at two critical points in the life-course—early adulthood and near-retirement age” (p.11). By examining the ways in which younger adult carers understand and conceptualize eldercare and caregiving, I contribute to the growing body of literature exploring the experiences of younger eldercare providers and provide insight into the concept of care itself—what it means, who does it, and what makes a caregiver in the context of filial care. 2.3 Defining eldercare Duxbury and Higgins (2017) summarize caregiving frameworks as including the following main categories: activities of daily living/instrumental activities of daily living (ADL/IADLs), nursing, care management, psychological care and spiritual care. The ADL/IADL dichotomy is often referenced in studies focused on individuals with dementia and includes activities such as personal care such as bathing, feeding, dressing, and toileting (ADL), and transportation, 14 shopping, banking, meals, housecleaning, etc. (IADL) (Duxbury & Higgins, 2017). The use of these groupings differs depending on the study approach, but the categorization of care is often task-based. Providing transportation ranked as the single most reported task in both the 2012 and 2018 waves of the Canada General Social Survey: Caregiving and Care Receiving study (Hardy & Omercic, 2020; Sinha, 2013). While Duxbury and Higgins’ (2017) also found that running errands and transportation were common tasks for carers, providing moral or emotional support was ubiquitously cited as a key component of care. Furthermore, emotional support represented the most intensive of care activities among both women and men, although women were significantly more likely than men to find providing emotional support demanding (Duxbury & Higgins, 2017). The inclusion of emotional support as a form of care in caregiving research has implications for understanding the prevalence and frequency of care. As Patterson and Margolis (2019) explain, women are more likely to provide emotional support and to do so over the life course. Excluding it from analysis has a tendency to undercount women’s involvement in care, particularly in early adulthood. Their findings thus highlight a key challenge in research on caregiving—scholars’ decisions in terms of inclusion and operationalization of care, particularly when taking a task-based approach, can shape our understanding of the prevalence and performance of care. Some circumvent this issue by approaching care as time-based, and instead examine caregiving and caregiver experiences or outcomes based on the time devoted to care provision (Dukhovnov & Zagheni, 2015; Glauber, 2019). However, because it may not capture the intensity of the activities being performed or the explicit needs of people who receive care, time spent caring 15 may not, on its own, fully reflect caregiver burden or role overload (Duxbury & Higgins, 2017; Halinski, Duxbury, & Stevenson, 2020). Focusing on the experiences of highly time intensive forms of care may obscure the challenges facing younger care providers, who may support parents or grandparents less frequently but may well still face repercussions for doing so. Although time-based approaches help create space for new or atypical forms of care to ‘count’ as care, they rarely examine how individual care providers understand their activities, and whether respondents themselves define caregiving separately from other forms of assistance. 3 2.4 Theorizing caregiver identity How scholars define care can implicitly shape who gets included in scholarly research on caregiving. Although efforts are clearly made to be inclusive when defining care, studies rarely examine how, when, or why care providers come to identify as caregivers or how and why they reject the title (Eifert, Adams, Dudley, & Perko, 2015). Instead, care provision tends to represent caregiver status, regardless of whether or not individuals self-identify as caregivers (Funk & Hounslow, 2019). However, individuals who perform care do not always perceive themselves as caregivers, and may be less likely to take advantage of key support services designed to alleviate the myriad challenges associated with caregiving (Andréasson, Andreasson, & Hanson, 2018; 3 Molyneaux et al. (Molyneaux et al., 2011) have investigate the complexities and challenges of the terms carer (often used in the UK) and caregiver (often used in the US/Canada), and advocate for an engaged reflection on the use of terminology in care research. 16 Eifert, Dudley, Eddy, Perko, & Adams, 2019; Martindale-Adams, Nichols, Zuber, Burns, & Graney, 2016). Caregiver Identity Theory (Montgomery & Kosloski, 2009) explicitly investigates the role transition from adult child to informal caregiver of related elders for reasons due to illness and aging, as well as the psychosocial processes driving shifts in role incongruity. The authors argue that fully adopting and integrating the caregiver identity follows five phases, although not necessarily experienced sequentially: 1) beginning to perform care-related activities like shopping or transportation; 2) when the care provider begins to realize that the care activities go beyond the traditional relationship they have previously had; 3) when care activities extend far beyond the initial relationship and start to involve personal or physical care; 4) when caregiving begins to fully encompass the relationship; and 5) when care is turned over to formal or external care providers. Identifying as a caregiver often occurs in phase 2 (Montgomery & Kosloski, 2009), when the care provider realizes that there has been a fundamental shift in the nature of the relationship with the care recipient. Scholars examining caregiver identity among informal carers, acknowledge that “caregiver research is still emerging and there may be other factors not stated in the literature” influencing whether or not people identify as caregivers (Eifert et al., 2019, p. 8). Eifert et al (2019) build upon the Caregiver Identity Theory framework to develop the Family Caregiver Identity Scale (FCIS), which attempts to reflect the impact of the caregiver role without requiring a priori adoption of a/the caregiver identity. This approach offers an alternative to simply asking someone if they are a caregiver by focusing on the personal, relational, and behavioral changes that occur as one takes on a caregiving role, regardless of whether one sees themselves as a 17 caregiver, now or ever. Because they use the FCIS as a proxy for caregiver identity, Eifert et al. (2019) circumnavigate, to some extent, the complexities of identity formation. However, care providers may still be hesitant to adopt the term ‘caregiver’, and the FCIS offers no examination of why that may be. Qualitative discussions about how, when, and in what contexts people identify as caregivers, can shed light on this key issue—one that is central to ensuring care providers have access to the services and resources they need. In her qualitative study of family caregivers, O’Connor (2007) explores how people begin to identify themselves as caregivers, as well as the outcomes of that shift, and introduces the concept of positioning theory to explain the relational and discursive nature of caregiver identity development. O’Connor (2007) finds that “positioning one’s self as a caregiver takes place when one develops a new framework, or story-line, for understanding and constructing meaning about one’s actions” (p. 172). Similar to Caregiver Identity Theory (Montgomery & Kosloski, 2009), caregivers come to adopt the term when they recognize a shift or change in the nature of the activities they perform, but O’Connor (2007) expands our understanding of what motivates such a shift by highlighting the ways in which relationships and discourses can create awareness of changes for caregivers. In particular, participation in support groups and discussions with other caregivers can create eye-opening moments for people who begin to see themselves and their role in new ways. O’Connor’s (2007) research offers an important contribution in this regard, but does not explore why some people may not transition to adopting the caregiver term even as they continue to perform care activities. Beatie et al.’s (2021) recent study of care providers for people diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) offers insight into the utility of both Caregiver Identity and positioning 18 theories. While they find that caregiver identity can be shaped by changes in required care activities (such as when their participants begin to observe MCI outcomes), “the majority of participants described existing in the ‘in-between’—identifying in a space of liminality” (p. 10). This “identity liminality,” as Beatie et al. call it, stood out as the predominant locus of identity for these care providers, reflecting both the “role ambivalence” that exists when family members take on care responsibilities for other family members, as well as “a sense of confusion and uncertainty with what being a caregiver means” (p. 11). The fluid nature of caregiver identity reinforces the relevance of positioning and discourse as central to identity formation.4 Identity liminality productively reflects the complex nature of the term caregiver, and more research on this phenomenon can shed light on why some care providers remain hesitant to call themselves caregivers. While scholars have articulated a variety of care activities and operationalized them as helpful frameworks or scales (Duxbury & Higgins, 2017; Keating, Fast, Lero, Lucas, & Eales, 2014; Rosenthal, Martin-Matthews, & Keefe, 2007), additional insight into the practices and perspectives of care providers in early adulthood will enhance our understanding of the variations of care across the life course. We are beginning to understand more of the nuances in caregiver identity formation, however more research is needed to understand how context— 4 The study of identity formation and development is itself a substantial field of research and a deep study lies outside the scope of the present article. With early roots in the work of Erik Erikson (1950) and James E. Marcia (1966), numerous theories of identity development and formation exist and have to varying degrees been applied to sociological subfields including (but not limited to) gender, motherhood, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ageing, etc. (Korff, Grotevant, Koh, & Samek, 2010; Murgia, 2011; Neblett, Roth, & Syed, 2019; Ross, Essien, Williams, & Fernandez-Esquer, 2003). The interested reader can learn about the progression of theories of identity formation in Schwartz (2001). 19 including caregiver age—matters to identity formation, and where barriers to taking on that identity emerge. 2.5 Methods 2.5.1 Data The data for this study comprises 29 semi-structured first and second interviews with 21 respondents between the ages of 23 and 47 who are currently employed or who have been employed in the last 12 months, and who provide some form of informal support or assistance to their parents or grandparents. Eight interviews were conducted in person between November 2019 and February 2020, typically in coffee shops or restaurants, with some completed at the participants’ workplace. In March of 2020, due to COVID-19 restrictions, I transitioned to telephone or online interviews, the remainder of which were conducted using Skype for Business or Microsoft Teams. Participants were recruited for the study using purposive sampling techniques. I distributed my recruiting poster through social media (Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn), shared the flyer with two workplaces, and reached out to organizations who work with seniors and/or caregivers and requested that they distribute the flyer to their clientele. The study was also advertised in a family caregiver newsletter through the Family Caregivers of British Columbia, a non-profit support service for informal care providers. Approximately one-quarter of the study participants responded to the social media posts or newsletter (n=6), while others were recruited through workplaces (n=5). Upon participation, some interviewees recommended additional participants as well, often spouses or siblings who perform similar care (n=10). Seven respondents agreed to participate in second interviews and the responses from those interviews are included as part of 20 the analysis as well. Respondents were predominantly women, and while the majority identified as white/Caucasian, others identified as Filipino, Chinese, Iranian, and Croatian. Three participants co-reside with their older family members, and the majority live within a reasonable driving distance, if not closer. Five participants lived further away and provided support over the phone, financially, and/or through occasional visits and stays. Participant age was restricted to people in their mid-20s to mid-40s to capture the perspectives of younger adults. Eligibility for the study also required participants to be currently employed or employed within the last twelve months, as the larger study for which this data was collected focuses in part on how carers navigate competing priorities, including work. Because I intended to study caregiver identity, I chose not to include the term in my recruitment materials. Instead, I invited participants who “help [their] parents or grandparents sometimes with appointments, shopping, paying bills, and other aspects of daily life” to discuss how they balance work and helping out their family. While respondent backgrounds are diverse and varied, many participants have a standard employment relationship—working full-time regular hours for the same employer indefinitely, at the employer’s business locale (Kalleberg, 2000; Vosko, 2010). This means people are taking on care in evenings, and weekends—necessarily part-time, but also that it may disrupt their employment—and that may matter for development of caregiver identity as well as the broad experience of care provision. Additional respondent characteristics are included in Table 2.1. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Interviews averaged 58 minutes and ranged from 42 to 72 minutes in duration. 21 2.5.2 Analytical method Transcribed data was coded using Nvivo software and follows Ragin’s (1994) retroductive coding approach. I began with deductive codes based on the interview guide and recent caregiver identity studies, and reviewed transcripts line by line to code additional themes as they emerged from the data. I then compiled themes into overarching categories and examined how the themes aligned with one another and which codes hung together, similar to a factor analysis approach (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Once the major themes were evident, I contextualized them within the extant research, considering how they support, extend, and challenge what I know. Finally, I considered the themes in response to the research questions. Table 2.1 Respondent demographics Respondent Characteristics (n=21) % Age (mean) 38.5 Gender Female 76% Male 24% Relationship to Care Recipient Parent/Parent-in-law 90% Grandparent 10% Education High School or less 10% College/Trades 29% Bachelor's degree 29% Graduate Degree 33% Occupational Field Manager/Professional 38% Trades/Technical 14% Office/Clerical 29% Healthcare 14% N/A 5% Occupational Status Full-time 76% Part-time/Contract 19% Unemployed 5% 22 2.6 Findings 2.6.1 Conceptualizing care I sought to understand how informal care providers conceptualize and define care, asking: “what makes something care, as opposed to helping out?” Given the varied nature of the tasks people undertake as part of informal care, approaches to defining care were similarly varied. Participants often differentiated care as driven by necessity, although respondents who self-identified as being from ethno-cultural backgrounds where multigenerational living is more common tended to find it harder to distinguish between care and helping and were more likely to perceive care as primarily physical. While physical care was automatically perceived as care for some individuals, for many respondents any task or activity can be care if it is undertaken because the recipient cannot complete it themselves. 2.6.2 Necessity as a defining characteristic of care Care and helping out can often overlap. Many of the tasks that individuals do to support their family members are things that anyone might do to help out another person on occasion. Occasionally picking up things from the grocery store or taking someone to an appointment could easily be understood as helping out. In a family context we often provide support to one another without thinking of it as caregiving (Connidis, 2010). When examining the difference between care and helping out, participants frequently referred to the expectation of care—the necessity of it—as a distinguishing factor between the two. As one participant explains: 23 “I would probably just whittle it down maybe just to say, assessing need, making sure that people have what they need or giving them the resources to get what they need.” (Tara) For Tara,* the same task or activity in another context may not be deemed care. Rather than conceptualizing care as task-based, we can understand it here as based on a person’s needs. Similarly, another participant explains that something becomes care when it is done because the person is unable to or cannot do the activity on their own or without the assistance. Put succinctly: “I’m having to do that because he requires it...that’s when I think it kinda kicks in as the definition of care” (Bethany). Respondents tended to frame their understanding of care around requirement or obligation, based on an elder’s inability to do things themselves or the sense that if the care provider does not assist, there could be consequences. The concept of care as driven by necessity also arises from a sense of familial responsibility. Something becomes care because a person needs assistance, but it falls on the shoulders of the care provider due to the nature of the relationship and a desire to be there to support their parent: “It’s a really good question because on one hand, it’s about dependencies... It’s about like helping other people meet their needs, and so that could be physically, that could be emotionally, that could be financially. But it sort of extends beyond that because it’s really about my relationship to that person, but also my relationship to myself in the sense that, I am actively choosing to be present and attending to those needs. Not just in the logistical sense, but * All names have been changed to protect confidentiality. 24 that I’m seeing the implications of this, for this person as a person, and also for their life.” (Lisa) This example highlights not only that parents (or grandparents) require help, but also that “I,” the child and care provider, choose to be the one who provides assistance—I can help, I can be their ‘person.’ 2.6.3 Physical care and cultural context Although respondents provide support to their family members in a variety of ways, and the transition between helping and caring consistently aligned with need, physical care stood out as a key component of care for respondents with ethnic or cultural backgrounds where multi-generational households are common. Where broad socio-cultural expectations that one will provide help and support to family exist, managerial activities or emotional support do not seem to be framed as care: “I think…I have a natural bias to think of care as something very physical” (Kimberley). Here, we see that care is primarily understood as performing bodily or personal care. Kimberley explained her interpretation of care as driven in part by her ethnic background and how she has seen care performed by her family members: “So, culturally, I’m Filipino. My entire family is, the bulk of them are nurses. And I have stories where my mom, at one time or another, she’s given every single one of her sister-in-law’s a sponge bath…You know, so for us, care/helping is really interchangeable. It’s built into our culture. Like, we joke that there’s no care homes in the Philippines—you’re just expected to take care of your family.” (Kimberley) 25 Differentiating between care or helping out is difficult in certain cultural contexts, which aligns with previous research on the subject suggesting that caregiver experiences differ by cultural group (Funk, Chappell, & Liu, 2013). Another respondent expressed this challenge explicitly, by stating not only that physical action drives care but also that in his native tongue, the language itself does not easily differentiate between ‘helping’ or ‘caring’: “You know, I think when you have to do physical action, or to do physical application you are [caring]. I think so. It’s tough for us to do the difference in [language] with the caring words… But I think you start to take care when you do a physical action.” (Phillip) For Phillip, the focus on physical care reinforces a requisite-based distinction amidst a more narrowly defined set of care activities. Another expressed that part of the reason they deem physical care as central to caring is that it is based on necessity: “I mean, the word care has kind of negative connotation to me…and I feel like there should be someone sick or someone who is not able, who is disabled or who is suffering from very, very severe disease or mental problem, so they need care.” (Negar) Parents’ needs remain key, even if care is restricted to more physical considerations such illness, injury or disability. Where participants are so clearly defining care as physical, they are also applying a cultural framework for understanding caregiving—and the barriers or bounds to the term. As Negar demonstrates, for her ‘care’ is physical, and therefore if she tends to perform more managerial tasks, she is uncomfortable adopting the term caregiver: 26 “I mean, classically or traditionally I know when they’re sick and I’m taking care of them, I’m a caregiver…but I’m not sure if I can extend that to the time, I’m doing the financial matter for them or helping them doing their tax returns. I mean, that’s not a care.” (Negar) Ultimately, understanding how individuals conceptualize care becomes fundamentally important for shaping who is—or can be —a caregiver. 2.7 Nuances of caregiver self-identification When asked “do you think of yourself as a caregiver,” slightly under one-third of participants (29%) said yes. The remaining two-thirds either did not identify as a caregiver (43%) or fell somewhere in between (29%), termed identity liminality following Beatie et al. (2021). While understanding these proportions is important, the numbers don’t tell the whole story—there are nuances, such as gender and market-based conceptualizations of care, that blur the adoption of a caregiver identity. 2.7.1 Motivating factors for identifying as a caregiver Though a minority in this study, several participants affirmed that they identify as caregivers, often in relation to the time spent on care or their continuous availability for care-related duties. A central theme emerged among self-identified caregivers: a strong alignment between how they conceptualize and understand care and the types of care activities they perform, making it relatively easier for them to adopt the identity. As one participant specifically articulates, their understanding of their role as a caregiver is directly related to their conceptualization of care. When asked why she identifies as a caregiver, Tara says: 27 “Well, because I meet the criteria that I laid out when I described what care is. You know, like assessing for need, making sure that they have what they need. If they don’t have what they need, making sure that they get what they need. You know, all that stuff.” (Tara) Similarly, another participant defines care using a more task-based approach (“It’s the appointments, it’s paying her bills, it’s that kind of stuff”) and explains her adoption of the term caregiver as taking on these tasks interrupts and adjusts her work and family schedule: “Yeah I would now. I don’t think, I mean I wouldn’t previously. These are, it’s family so you kind of do things that for kids are usually an annoyance, but they’re not extravagant in their request of like hey, can you come help me move this shelf? I can’t move the shelf on my own or something like that, right? It’s not an outrageous request. But now I do feel like it’s a bit more and it’s turned into care where I’m juggling with OK she has this appointment, oh I may as well book my appointments on that day and we’ll just make it an appointment day. So I only take one day off from work or half a day let’s say if we can condense them as opposed to taking multiple days for my appointments, my kid’s appointments and my mum’s appointments.” (Gabriella) Gabriella identifies the need to balance work and care, alongside the time commitment—and work interruptions—that care begins to require. The time and additional responsibility of care appears to play a role for some in how some adopt the term caregiver, as one participant explains of his transition to becoming a caregiver: “It’s a lot of extra work. It’s a lot of extra time. It’s making a conscious effort every day to do something, and if you don’t do it, you kind of feel guilty for not doing it. Yeah, it’s a lot of work” (James). 28 The additional expectations of time and effort around caregiving are one way in which people come to see themselves as caregivers, which supports the phased transition process as outlined by Caregiver Identify Theory (Montgomery & Kosloski, 2009), but interpreting caregiving as explicitly time related can also act as a form of closure or boundary that prevents some people from adopting the term, despite the care activities they perform. 2.7.2 Barriers to identifying as a caregiver Participants frequently gave disclaimers and caveats suggesting factors that problematize the adoption of a caregiver identity. For many respondents, this distinction was due to a perception that caring for one’s parents is about family obligation or reciprocity, reinforcing similar themes evident in the body of literature on families and aging (Connidis & McMullin, 2002; Sussman & Shanas, 1977). Even if you perform care, you are not a ‘caregiver,’ because, simply put: “I just think that’s what you do for your family” (Andrea). Some participants saw a fundamental conflict between a ‘caregiver’ identity and the expectation of family support, which limited their ability to frame what they do —regardless of care activities performed —as caregiving. The notion of providing care to parents as simply expected or as ‘natural’ was very common among participants, but it also created a type of boundary, in the sense that it felt inconsistent with the familial relationship. “I just feel like this is the normal thing that people do like for their parents. I just feel like this is the natural—I know it’s not for everybody, but I feel like this is very natural, like you’re aging so I’m going to take care of you and that’s the way it should go.” (Julie) 29 “I think for some of the help, it’s not necessarily in my mind categorized as help or support or care…It’s more so that it’s a natural thing that I would, of course, do.” (Bethany) Understanding care as ‘natural’ invokes the concept of reciprocity—the sense that parents provide for their children and in return children can care for their parents as they age. “My parents gave us a really safe, loving, caring home to grow up in, and I am who I am largely because I had that start in life, right? And so, it’s like this is an opportunity to, not repay, but to sort of, honour that contribution to who I am as a person by reciprocating.” (Lisa) “Like they’re my parents. They gave me life. They gave up things. They made sacrifices for me and I’ve had a good life because of that, so the least I can do is return the favour to them. And I would never want them to go without. I would never want them to feel like they were alone. I would never want them to feel like they couldn’t have something or do something because somebody couldn’t help them with it, right? So, I will always be their person to always be like, if I can be there to help you to do whatever, I will do it.” (Alexia) Caring out of love, connection, or relationship with family is a familiar theme in scholarly research, and historically part of the challenge in treating informal care as care stems from normative constructions of gendered divisions of reproductive labour (O’Connor, 2007). Unsurprisingly, framing care as a ‘natural’ and expected role within a family was unique to women respondents. While men in this study were broadly reluctant to identify as caregivers (only one man did), none included a discussion of care as ‘natural’ in their interviews. Instead, the main consideration for men when determining whether or not they identified as caregivers was time. James, the lone man who did identify as a caregiver, articulated that it was the 30 intensity of the time and task burden that affirmed his caregiver status. The other men in the study were not comfortable adopting the term in part because, for them, care simply did not represent a sufficient burden: “Maybe becoming a caregiver is when you decide to take it on and being willing to adjust your life to accommodate that life, right?” (Brandon) “For me a caregiver is when you help your parents, or someone, at fulltime work.” (Phillip) Rather than thinking of caregiving predominantly as an extension of familial relationships, men in the study differentiated the caregiver role as one that is fundamentally time-based. Where individuals shape and adjust their lives around care, they can be caregivers. Feeling a sense of insufficient time spent on care tasks, the majority of men respondents did not adopt the term. 2.7.3 Negotiating market-based conceptions of care Framing caregiving in relation to time highlights an interesting element of caregiver identification: market-based conceptions of care, or the notion of caregiving as related to full-time or paid work, which was most prevalent among the younger respondents in the study. Many of the younger study respondents declined to identify themselves as caregivers because of their understanding of the term, using a more formal (or medical) approach to understanding caregiving (Martin-Matthews, 2000). For some, this is in part due to prior work experience, such as Julie, previously employed as a formal caregiver: “I don’t feel like I’m a caregiver. When I think of caregivers I think of the special needs people that I worked with and, you know, that was a caregiver. I 31 was a caregiver in that role, I was being paid and I wasn’t related to them. So, yeah, I guess that’s why.” (Julie) Julie made a clear distinction between her previous paid care work and the informal care work she does for her parents, which she found relevant to her ability to adopt the term ‘caregiver’. Others who had not performed formal care also seemed to feel similarly: “I would not [identify as a caregiver]. To me, a caregiver seems more full-time.” (Kimberley) Christina: What would make someone a caregiver? Andrea: When you hire someone to do it…Hire an outside caregiver. Collectively, these respondents negotiated their identity in opposition to a market-based framing of the role: being a caregiver is a full-time and/or paid job, therefore informal care (regardless of task performed) is not caregiving. However, this approach to the term caregiver can also act as a motivating factor for identity adoption among people who do feel as though they are compensated in some way. For Clara, her willingness to identify as a caregiver was directly related to her understanding of herself as paid in some fashion: Christina: Would you identify as a caregiver? Clara: A 100 percent, yes…I think one of the things that made it easier for me to do that was that I think of myself as paid, because I get room and board. And that makes a big difference, that I think of myself as paid. Clara, who spends a significant amount of time on care provision and who perceives herself as compensated for care, found her conception of caregiving and her experience of providing care aligned in such a way that developing a caregiver identity was easy for her. Few other 32 respondents were providing care as frequently, so in the context of the typical younger adult carer experience, the market-based framing of caregiving would more often represent a barrier to caregiver identity development. Part of the struggle some respondents face in calling themselves caregivers relates to the interplay between their understanding of the term and their care activities. 2.7.4 Identity liminality in informal care Similar to Beatie et al.’s (2021) findings, a number of participants were unsure or ambivalent as to whether they considered themselves caregivers. Some participants were willing to call themselves caregivers because of the intensity of the work they do or because their activities align with how they personally understand care, but they were hesitant to openly adopt the term because of a sense of societal perceptions of care as more aligned with physical care or specific duties. “When we think of caregiver, typically it’s the person who feeds you, helps you take baths. You know, walks you up and down the street to make sure you get your exercise. That kind of thing.” (Kimberley) Kimberley perceives certain societal norms around how caregiving is understood, which may or may not reflect the activities she performs. Another participant explains this challenge clearly, and while she does identify as a caregiver in terms of her response to the interview question, she frames her role differently in conversations with others to better reflect the impact caregiving has on her and her life: “When I talk about it to someone and I say oh yeah, you know, like I’m a caregiver for my dad, I feel like that implies that I do stuff for him. But when I 33 talk about it in a way that I want people to really understand what it means to me personally; I say, like, I provide care.” (Lisa) For Lisa, using the term ‘caregiver’ creates confusion around her role and connotes, for her and potentially for others, certain activities or actions that may not align with what she does as an informal care provider. As such, she understands her position of caregiver but does not necessarily present that to others. Several participants found themselves unsure of the external acceptability of adopting the term ‘caregiver’, which suggests that identity liminality arises in part from the complexity and multiple meanings of caregiver terminology across various contexts. 2.8 Discussion This study offers insight into how younger adult informal eldercare providers conceptualize care and how they negotiate their identity as caregivers. I find that ‘care’ is predominantly understood as driven by necessity—activities undertaken because the care recipient needs or requires them. Perceptions of care also shape the concept of caregiving itself. Participants who understood their actions as care found it easier to identify as caregivers, but several barriers emerged that created hesitancy or an outright rejection of adopting the term ‘caregiver’ among other respondents. Understanding caregiving as a market-based, paid, or full-time role prevented some participants from identifying as a caregiver; as did gendered constructions of familial responsibility. Confusion or vagueness around the societal definition of the term ‘caregiver’ reinforced identity liminality, where individuals are conscious of their role as care providers but are unsure if they ‘count’ as a caregiver. 34 Our scholarly understanding of care, or what counts as care, is often based on frequently performed care tasks (Duxbury & Higgins, 2017). Over time, scholars have expanded our understanding of the variety of tasks that informal eldercare providers perform (Rosenthal et al., 2007; Sims-Gould & Martin-Matthews, 2010), and continue to explore the impacts of time and time-related penalties associated with eldercare provision (Calvano, 2013; Glauber, 2019). While enumeration in this manner is both useful and insightful, my findings suggest that these analytical approaches do not necessarily reflect how many eldercare providers—particularly women—understand and conceptualize care. Patterson and Margolis (2019) highlight a key risk of task and time-based approaches to measuring care: incorporation or exclusion of some forms of care (specifically emotional support) changes who ‘cares’, how much, and when. Carers themselves do not consistently frame care as task-based: they acknowledge that the very same task in one context can simply be helping out, while in another, when motivated by necessity and/or obligation, that task may be ‘care’. This nuance, while semantic, has practical implications for scholarly research. If researchers are too focused on types of care, or time spent caring, they may miss both the variations in care activities performed and also under-or over-represent both types of care as well as care providers—of central importance since younger adult carers remain understudied (Koumoutzis et al., 2021). While I find that conceptions of care are inherently connected to defining caregiving, providing care does not automatically mean that one identifies as a caregiver. Indeed, many care providers do not refer to themselves in that manner (Beatie et al., 2021; Eifert, Adams, Dudley, & Perko, 2015; Funk & Hounslow, 2019). Much of the extant scholarship on caregiver identity has 35 focused on identity formation—when, why and how people come to adopt the term. Role incongruity driving a phased identity development process (Montgomery & Kosloski, 2009) and identity as following fluid continuum (Beatie et al., 2021) both shape our understanding of caregiver identity. My findings interact with elements of each of these theories, and offer strong support for Beatie et al.’s (2021) conclusions about the prevalence of identity liminality, but there have been heretofore limited discussions of the central barriers to adopting the term ‘caregiver’, and the reasons that some people simply do not transition to using the term. As such, my findings expand our understanding of caregiver identity by examining the factors that impede people who engage in care from characterizing their role as caregivers. Younger adult eldercare providers are often in the beginning stages of caregiving, observing the shift in their activities and the changing relationship with their parents or grandparents, but not yet taking a prominent role in more extensive forms of care. This stage of caregiving would seem to fall squarely in Phase 2 of caregiver identity theory (Montgomery & Kosloski, 2009), and yet the majority of my participants did not readily identify as caregivers. Several studies similarly highlight the limitation of caregiver identity theory to sufficiently reflect the fluid or nuanced nature of identity formation (Beatie et al., 2021; Eifert et al., 2019; O’Connor, 2007). For some, the phased transition may be sufficient for identity change—especially those for whom care activities fall into traditional conceptions of care, like physical care—but for others it appears that there are additional contexts, challenges, and barriers that hinder adoption of the caregiver term. Respondents expressed confusion and/or ambivalence around how, when, and for whom the term ‘caregiver’ applies. The alignment with Beatie et al.’s (2021) findings in this regard suggests that 36 the barriers to identity formation may be particularly relevant in the early stages of caregiving, as both studies recognize identity liminality across different age demographics and care relationships, while other studies suggest that caregiver identity adoption occurs once the caregiving duties intensify (Dickson, O’Brien, Ward, Allan, & O’Carroll, 2010). Identity liminality (Beatie et al., 2021) appears to emerge in part due to the prevalence of market-based conceptions of caregiving. Respondents found the threshold to “caregiver” harder to cross—even as the activities undertaken and support provided became part of, and impacted, their lives. It was difficult for many informal carers to assume an identity that others are or can be hired to perform (directly or indirectly through the healthcare system). The perception of ‘caregiver’ as a paid or full-time role created a reticence for respondents to conceptualize themselves in the same way, since for most, informal care was less frequent and less intense than full-time care. The reality of a medicalized system of care means that the term caregiver takes on multiple meanings, used both for formal and informal care, which seems to create confusion for family carers both in terms of their understanding of their role as well as for their willingness to use a term that is—broadly and across society—associated with paid work. O’Connor (2007) highlights this challenge as well in her acknowledgment of caregiving as socially constructed. In this regard, to fully understand identity liminality, we must also recognize the interplay and interaction between paid and unpaid care work. Familial responsibility also posed a barrier for carers, women in particular, to adopt a caregiver identity. Caring for family involves tasks that many individuals already do or would have done as part of a reciprocal parent-child or spousal relationship (Funk & Hounslow, 2019; O’Connor, 2007). For women respondents, gendered conceptions of household and reproductive work 37 played a role in rejecting a caregiver identity, as many stated that care is simply something one does for family. Care has long been associated with ‘women’s work’, both in formal paid work as well as in informal settings (England, Budig, & Folbre, 2002a), and discussions of love, reciprocity, and responsibility all factored into perceptions of care as a representation of family rather than as components of a caregiver role. Although women were hesitant to identity as caregivers because of a sense of familial responsibility, none of the men in the study spoke about care as expected or inherently part of what a person does as a family member. My findings align with previous research that highlights the gendered nature of men’s filial care, which suggests that men may take on different or less time-consuming care activities than women (Campbell & Martin-Matthews, 2003). Many younger adult informal carers are not yet taking on substantial time commitments in caregiving, and for the men in the study, their limited time spent on care represented a more significant barrier to adopting a caregiver identity than did thinking of care as a familial expectation. 2.8.1 Limitations and future research I explicitly used the term ‘caregiver’ when asking respondents how they think about their care work (“Do you think of yourself as a caregiver?”). Because previous research consistently shows that many care providers do not identify as caregivers, scholars have been moving away from using that term (Eifert et al., 2015; Molyneaux, Butchard, Simpson, & Murray, 2011). However, the formal resources available to support family carers in Canada are consistently positioned as for caregivers: Family Caregivers of BC, Caregivers Alberta, Ontario Caregiver Organization, Ontario Caregiver Coalition, Young Caregivers Association, etc. Even the national ‘day of 38 recognition’ for carers in Canada is called National Caregivers Day. Given the prevalence of the term throughout the community, caregiver identity adoption remains an important site of study. There are also certain unique characteristics of my sample that shed light on how we might understand and apply these findings. Because this study focuses specifically on eldercare providers in their mid-20s to mid-40s, conceptions of care and the barriers to caregiver identity formation articulated here may differ from those experienced by other age demographics. Similarly, because this study involves participants primarily in early stages of filial caregiving, there is reason to explore how barriers to identity formation function when the care needs are greater or when care relationships differ, such as spousal care. Future studies may consider investigating not just care tasks performed but also activities undertaken due to necessity, creating space for reflecting the care recipient needs filled as part of caregiving. This would enable scholars to continue to recognize new and varied forms of caregiving and caregivers. Additionally, future research should continue to explore the barriers that can prevent people from adopting a caregiver identity in addition to exploring the motivations that drive the formation process, particularly among younger care providers and where individuals have different care needs. The dynamics of caregiver identity with respect to market-based conceptions of care also offers a fruitful opportunity for deeper examination. Further examination of the factors that shape caregiver identity for younger men may also be useful, as conceptions of care and its relationship to family responsibility has been shown to differ across gender in a variety of ways (Björk, 2015; Campbell, 2010), and may create unique patterns of caregiver identity development (or rejection) for men that are not currently explored in the literature. The findings articulated here expand our understanding of both the concept of 39 care and the barriers facing younger adult eldercare providers as they frame their identity and create an opportunity to better reflect and consider care provider perspectives in research, policy development, and service provision. 2.9 Conclusion My study considers how younger eldercare providers conceptualize care and negotiate their identity as caregivers. While conceptions of care are broad, and encompass any or all tasks completed due to care recipient needs, there is a hesitancy to adopt the term ‘caregiver’, regardless of care activities performed. The liminal nature of informal caregiving, sitting somewhere in between family support and formal care work, introduces complexity, confusion, and ambivalence to adopting a caregiver identity. By exploring how carers understand and use the term caregiver, my study illuminates the barriers to developing a ‘caregiver’ identity and informs not only scholarly discourse but also reinforces the importance of reflecting on the terminology used in public resources. Understanding one’s role as a family caregiver impacts access to necessary services and support. The barriers to adopting a caregiver identity found here suggest that for some, the term may never quite fit or feel right, and as such it may be time to revisit the language we use in research, policy, and service provision. Expecting people to adopt an identity that does not align with how they feel in order to find and use the support services designed for them may not, ultimately, lead to beneficial outcomes for informal carers whose work is so important and key to their families, society and the healthcare system alike. 40 Chapter 3. Work and Care 3.1 Introduction “This has been kind of like a long term goal of ours, like a dream if you will. And so you kind of have to mourn that, the loss of that dream.” (Samantha) Every day, carers navigate the challenge of balancing work, care, and life as a whole. By exploring the experiences of younger adult eldercare providers in their 20s to mid-40s as they manage competing demands, I acknowledge a substantial and growing cohort of caregivers whose needs and voices are not fully reflected in academic discourses or organizational policies. Differences in career stage and the life-course could result in different considerations for younger and older eldercare providers, or extend career impacts over a longer trajectory (Dlouhy & Biemann, 2018). Given the growing population of younger eldercare providers, exploring and understanding the implications of care provision for those in the early and formative stages of their career is imperative. Previous research on eldercare has prioritized the experiences of mature workers, primarily those ages 45 and over, at later stages in their careers (Stamatopoulos, 2015). Until recently, little scholarship has considered the impacts of providing eldercare on younger workers in the early, or formative, stages of their careers, whose experiences may differ from those of older workers. Because younger carers have historically been understudied, we do not know the extent to which their career decisions differ from those experienced by individuals in other age groups. In considering how employees navigate the balance of work and caregiving at earlier career stages, my central research question investigates how the care responsibilities of younger 41 eldercare providers shape their career-related decisions. Drawing on data from the 2018 Canadian General Social Survey (GSS), I explore two key questions: 1) to what extent do the career-related decisions of younger adult eldercare providers differ from their older counterparts; 2) How do the determinants of younger adult eldercare providers’ career-related decisions vary by age cohort? I follow the quantitative analysis with a qualitative narrative analysis that illuminates carers’ thought processes in balancing work and care. By focusing on a unique group of care providers whose experiences are not reflected in the extant literature, this study aims to enhance our understanding of how work and care can conflict across age cohorts. This approach offers new and valuable insight into eldercare by enumerating the extent to which young carers’ careers may be shaped by care, as well as how they think about, plan, and strategize around their competing priorities. 3.2 Background Navigating work and care responsibilities has long posed challenges for carers, particularly mothers (Perry-Jenkins & Gerstel, 2020), due in part to the ideal worker norm (Acker, 1990). The ideal worker—a component of Acker’s theory of gendered organizations—can be perpetually available to the employer because someone else is performing the domestic and reproductive household duties, including childcare, cooking and cleaning. As Acker (1990) explains: “the closest the disembodied worker doing the abstract job comes to a real worker is the male worker whose life centers on his full-time, life-long job, while his wife or another woman takes care of his personal needs and his children” (p. 149). The abstract ‘job’ requires full-time devotion to work without outside obligations: organizations expect that employees are perpetually available and present without disruption. Individuals who provide informal care are 42 at a disadvantage in the workplace in that they cannot be fully available to their employer and may face unanticipated interruptions during work hours. While the theory of gendered organizations was developed in the 1990s, it remains relevant today (Reid, 2015; Stecy-Hildebrandt, 2021). Even as the prevalence of the standard employment relationship (working full-time regular hours for the same employer indefinitely, at the employer’s business locale) has diminished (Vosko, 2010), and workplaces have incorporated more options for flexibility and remote work, the centering of work as a main responsibility and priority remains. Because this expectation of availability is embedded in the structure of the workplace itself, people who take advantage of flexibility policies face stigmatization and penalties, and are often viewed as less committed, less motivated, and less promotable (Blair-Loy, 2003; Williams, 2000; Williams, Blair-Loy, & Berdahl, 2013)—even when the organization has some type of formal flexible work policy (Almerm, Cohen, & Single, 2004; Glass, 2004a; Kmec, O’Connor, & Schieman, 2014).5 Even as workplaces have changed, the ideal worker norm persists; penalties associated with the deviation from ideal worker norms continue to impact care providers in terms of wage gaps and limitations to career development (Correll, Kelly, Trimble O’Connor, & Williams, 2014; Glauber, 2019; E. Kelly, Ammons, Chermack, & Moen, 2010; Reid, 2015). The COVID-19 pandemic has altered work arrangements as well, but has not ultimately shifted the underlying gendered dynamics of workplace and care-related expectations. Scholars are finding that women 5 While much of this research relates to parents/mothers caring for children, similar dynamics operate for eldercare providers (see section 3.2.1). 43 have been disproportionately affected by job loss, hours reductions and career impacts given increased care responsibilities that exacerbate work and care conflicts (Calarco, Meanwell, Anderson, & Knopf, 2021; Qian & Fuller, 2020). Although the way we work may be changing, the primacy of work as requiring full-time and uninterrupted devotion remains a persistent expectation—and can be a problem for carers to navigate. 3.2.1 Work and eldercare Research related to workplace penalties for caregiving often focuses on parenthood and childcare: “much of what we know about the family-work link stems from empirical investigations of employed mothers and fathers” (Kmec, Huffman, & Penner, 2014, p. 456). There is substantive evidence of a variety of interrelated ‘motherhood penalties’, including pay penalties (England, Bearak, Budig, & Hodges, 2016; Fuller, 2018; Glass, 2004b), hiring barriers and discrimination (Correll, Benard, & Paik, 2007; Kmec, Huffman, et al., 2014), and normative discrimination assuming that mothers can be competent or likeable, but not both (Benard & Correll, 2010). These penalties are driven in part by the assumption that mothers deviate from the ideal worker norm by being less committed to the workplace (Blair-Loy, 2003). Eldercare and childcare can both require unanticipated absences from work, short and long term leaves, and flexibility in terms of work hours and work locations, as well as the potential for some to leave the workforce altogether to meet their caregiving responsibilities (Keating et al., 2014; Lilly et al., 2010; Smith, 2004). As with motherhood penalties, eldercare providers, too, face hiring discrimination, loss of wages, limited access to promotions and training, and challenges in coordinating their work schedule (Kim, Ingersoll-Dayton, & Kwak, 2011; Koerin et al., 2008). Pay gaps for women who provide eldercare remain prevalent, and have not declined 44 substantively even across generations (Glauber, 2019). Eldercare providers may face more work-family role conflict, and higher levels of depression among caregivers relative to childcare providers (Brown, 2012; Sadavoy, Sajedinejad, Duxbury, & Chiu, 2022). High levels of stress, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and lethargy are prevalent concerns for carers, (Arksey, 2002) and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions to care routines increased anxiety, loneliness, and stress (Truskinovsky et al., 2021). While there are similarities between eldercare and childcare, there are also a number of differences (Martin-Matthews, 1996), and typical workplace supports for carers may not be sufficient to meet the needs of eldercare, particularly dementia caregiving (Sadavoy et al., 2022). Studies of eldercare often rely on the experiences of older caregivers or workers in the later stages of their careers, rather than on the experiences of young workers (D’Amen et al., 2021; Kavanaugh et al., 2016; Koumoutzis et al., 2021; McLaughlin et al., 2019). Where scholars do focus on the experiences of young carers, findings suggest that they face unique challenges, and that penalties may differ for younger adult carers in ways that require age-specific intervention (Koumoutzis et al., 2021). Among the youngest caregiver cohorts, carers risk missing school or delaying/changing their educational trajectory due to care requirements (Stamatopoulos, 2015), and among young adult carers, financial strain and work/care conflicts are prevalent (D’Amen et al., 2021; Dellmann-Jenkins et al., 2001; Koumoutzis et al., 2021; McLaughlin et al., 2019). Eldercare responsibilities before age 40 can also have significant career implications: “taking on the caregiving role was reported to have a negative spillover effect on the young adults’ professional development. For example, 15 percent believed they missed the opportunity for job promotions as a result of their caregiving role” (Dellmann-Jenkins et al., 2001, p. 15). 45 Because careers and occupational mobility are path dependent (Dlouhy & Biemann, 2018), choices made in early career stages may affect future options, leading to longer term consequences for young adult carers—particularly women, who are both more likely than men to be care providers (Keating & Eales, 2017) and to make adjustments to their work due to care requirements (Young, Milkie, & Schieman, 2022). Career selection may be affected not only by care responsibilities directly, but also by perceptions of family-friendliness and perceived flexibility in a given field. For example, Bates and Holt (2021) found that young women consider future care in career selection, and Dlouhy and Biemann (2018) found that gender has an effect on occupational turbulence, with women tending to have less turbulent careers because they are more likely to stay in the same role or field, which the authors attribute to a need to retain human capital and relationships to offset care and motherhood-related penalties. The career implications of eldercare for younger carers are, therefore, centrally important. 3.2.2 Gender and caregiving Just as age and career stage may create different outcomes for care providers, gender might also shift or alter the wage and workplace penalties of eldercare. To the extent that women make adjustment to their careers or career trajectories in response to current or anticipated care requirements, the same does not seem to be directly evident for men. Writing about childcare, Maume (2006) argues that men’s job tradeoffs are essentially unrelated to family care: “these findings suggest an enduring traditionalism in work-family role performance in which women adapt their work efforts to their spouses’ characteristics and the needs of children (but men do not)” (p.867). How care is divided is a discussion and negotiation between spouses, children, and formal care providers (Henz, 2010; Shuey & Hardy, 2003; Sims-Gould & Martin-Matthews, 46 2010). Unsurprisingly, eldercare seems to follow primarily along matrilineal lines (Henz, 2010), although spouses do share care for each other’s parents and both men and women provide parental care (Campbell & Martin-Matthews, 2000; Shuey & Hardy, 2003). Recent research, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, indicates that men may be providing more eldercare than previously (Raiber & Verbakel, 2021). However, fathers’ increased household and care support evident early on in the pandemic appears to have receded over time (Calarco et al., 2021), which may also be occurring among eldercare providers. Given the traditional view of care work as “women’s work,” men who provide eldercare may encounter challenges in the workplace that are both similar to and distinct from those facing women (England, Budig, & Folbre, 2002b). While mothers are penalized in the workplace for their childcare responsibilities, substantial evidence demonstrates that fathers receive a wage premium relative to men without children (Fuller, 2018; Fuller & Cooke, 2018; Hodges & Budig, 2010; K. Kelly & Grant, 2012; Killewald & Gough, 2013; Misra & Strader, 2013). Research also finds that fathers, including involved fathers who take an active role in childcare activities, can access positive employer perceptions more readily than mothers (Koslowski, 2011; Luhr, 2020). Similar gendered outcomes are apparent in the context of eldercare, where men who perform eldercare, and who interrupt their work to do so, are perceived more positively relative to male non-caregivers; while female eldercare providers (and mothers) are disadvantaged relative to their counterparts who do not provide care (Kmec, O’Connor, et al., 2014; Rose & Bruce, 1995). When comparing across generational cohorts, Glauber (2019) finds that the pay gaps for women who provide eldercare have been sustained over time while men who care for their parents are not penalized in the same manner. What this looks like for younger 47 adult eldercare providers remains to be seen, as few studies of younger carers consider variation in caregiving practices and their career impacts by gender. 3.3 Methodology I use a mixed and multi-methods approach to explore the work-related impacts of eldercare for younger workers, combining statistical analyses with semi-structured interviews of employed (or recently employed) individuals who perform informal eldercare. Mixed methods are appropriate for this study because the limited research on younger adult eldercare providers creates the potential that the questions posed in surveys may not be reflective of their actual experiences. As such, it is not only important to understand how younger workers navigate work and informal eldercare but also how they frame their career decisions in relation to their care responsibilities. 3.3.1 Quantitative analysis Data I use the 2018 Canadian General Social Survey (GSS), Care and Caregiving Cycle (32), which focuses on the consequences of caregiving for carers, as well as the experience of people who receive care (Statistics Canada, 2014). The GSS is a nationally representative repeated cross-sectional study conducted since 1985 by Statistics Canada. I accessed the secure microdata files through the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre. The GSS Cycle 32 Caregiving and Care Receiving captures the consequences of caregiving for the caregiver, both in terms of workplace-related penalties (such as wages and promotion rates), as well emotional and non-work effects of care provision. The target population for my study includes non-institutionalized residents of Canada’s 10 provinces, aged 15 and up. Cycle 32 of the GSS uses a ‘rejective sampling’ approach to ensure an adequate sample of care givers and 48 care receivers. Respondents who are neither care givers nor care receivers are randomly offered a long or short interview questionnaire, while care receivers/providers all participate in the long questionnaire. Because this paper considers the work-related impacts of eldercare, the sample is restricted to respondents who provide eldercare and who were employed at the time of the survey. I did not apply any restrictions to hours work or type of employment (full-time, part-time, contract, etc.). Eldercare providers are defined as individuals providing care to a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, mother/father-in-law, or unrelated elder. Outcome variables I consider two dependent variables: work hours (adjusting or reducing work hours in the last 12 months due to care responsibilities), and career advancement impact (turning down a promotion or not applying for a position in the last 12 months due to care responsibilities). Independent variables The key independent variable, age of eldercare provider, is measured as a categorical variable, using dichotomous groups: under 25, 25 to 45, and 46 and above, using those aged 46+ as the reference category. These age categories align with my qualitative data and offer comparative insight between young carers, younger adult carers, and older adult carers. When comparing across age cohorts, I consider gender as the key independent variable, measured as a binary Male/Female category due to the nature of the data collected. I also examine: frequency of care, which reflects whether the respondent provides care on a weekly, daily, monthly, or less than monthly basis; and type of care, which is captured as a 49 binary yes/no variable. The question states: “In the past twelve months, have you helped someone with {x},” including options such as transportation and shopping, meal prep and cleaning, house maintenance and outdoor care, personal care and bathing, and finances. Control variable Control variables include unionization, occupation, gender, education, marital status, presence of children in the home, part time employment, birth country, and visible minority status. Unionization captures whether or not a respondent is in a union. Occupation was captured based on the National Occupation Classification System (NOC), and the categories included in the study are: Management; Business, Finance and Administration; Natural and Applied Sciences; Health; Education, Law and Social Community; Art, Culture and Recreation; Sales and Service, Trades, Transport, and Equipment Operators; Natural Resources, Agriculture and Related Production; and Manufacturing and Utilities. Education, captured as a categorical variable, indicates the highest level of education achieved (>high school; high school grad; trades certificate or diploma; bachelor’s degree; and graduate/post graduate). Marital Status categories include Married/Cohabitation, Single/Never Married, and Divorced/Separated/Widowed. Presence of children in the home is a dichotomous variable that measures whether or not a respondent currently lives with single dependent children in their home, of any age. Part-time employment reflects whether or not individuals work fewer than 30 hours per week. Country of Birth is measured as a dichotomous variable, with categories for born in Canada or born elsewhere, which provides insight into the cultural background of respondents as well as immigrant status. Finally, visible minority status is a dichotomous variable that reflects whether or not respondents identify as a visible minority. 50 Analytical approach I use linear probability modelling (ordinary least squares regression with a binary outcome variable) to analyze my outcome variables—work hours (caregivers’ likelihood of reducing their work hours in the past 12 months) and career advancement impacts (declining/not applying for jobs or promotions in the last 12 months)—differ for younger adult eldercare providers compared to their older counterparts. Commonly used in Economics, linear probability modelling (LPM) is easier to interpret relative to logistic regression, is particularly useful when including categorical independent variables, and allows for comparisons of estimates across successive models as I add covariates (Mood, 2010). Additionally, where the overall probability is not overly high or low (roughly between .2 and .8), estimates tend to be very close to logit regression (Perraillon, Lindrooth, & Hedeker, 2022). I build sequential nested models, beginning with the bivariate relationship between age and each dependent variable. I then add frequency of care alongside type of care, to reflect any changes in the bivariate relationship when care considerations are included. My third model incorporates job characteristics, and my fourth model includes all control variables. After considering the results from the full sample, I estimate models separately for younger adult carers (ages 25 to 45) and older carers (ages 46+) to see if the factors shaping career consequences differ by age. In these models, a key concern is assessing gender differences in care-related work impacts across cohorts, and considering potential mediators of gender differences within cohorts. I follow by testing whether or not the coefficients in each model are statistically different (Clogg, Petkova, & Haritou, 1995). 51 Additionally, and as a form of sensitivity testing, I estimate a logistic regression model to ensure the robustness of my results (Mood 2010). To ensure accuracy in estimation of standard errors in alignment with the sampling strategy, I use bootstrap weights in all of my regression models as recommended by Statistics Canada. 3.3.2 Qualitative analysis In addition to the statistical analyses, I conducted 29 in-depth interviews with 21 employed informal eldercare providers, helping to expand our understanding of the ways in which these individuals navigate the balancing of their work and care responsibilities, specifically focusing on career-related decision making. I consider the results of the quantitative analysis in conjunction with data from semi-structured interviews with 20 employed (or recently employed) informal eldercare providers between the ages of 23-47. These interviews, approximately 1 hour long, were conducted between October 2019 through June 2021 either in person (pre-COVID-19 pandemic social distancing measures) or online via Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams. I used purposive sampling techniques to recruit participants; I connected with seniors’ organizations and caregiver resource providers asking them to a distribute a recruitment flyer and/or study details to their clientele. I also shared my recruiting poster through social media (Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn), and shared the flyer with colleagues who distributed it at their workplaces or to people they thought may be interested in participating. The study was also publicized by the Family Caregivers of British Columbia, a non-profit support service for informal care providers. After participating, several interviewees recommended additional participants, typically spouses or siblings who perform similar care (n=10). The remaining study 52 participants responded to the social media posts or newsletter (n=6), or heard about the study via word-of-mouth through friends or colleagues (n=5). Eight respondents agreed to participate in second interviews and the responses from those interviews are included as part of the analysis as well. Respondents were predominantly women (n=16), and while the majority identified as white/Caucasian (n=18), others identified as Filipino, Chinese, or Iranian (n=3). Three participants co-reside with their parents, and the majority live within a reasonable driving distance. Five participants lived further away and provided support over the phone, financially, and/or through occasional visits and stays. In general, I asked participants about their perspectives on the fundamentals of care; their work situations and approaches to navigating work and care; any time management strategies they employ; and the impact of physical/social distancing and changes due to COVID-19.6 Specifically related to balancing work and care, I asked participants about work schedules, availability of and/or use of workplace leave policies, and changes to career such as promotion and job impacts. Interviews were transcribed and coded using a flexible coding approach (Deterding and Waters 2018) using NVivo software. I began with deductive codes based on the interview guide and in relation to the quantitative dependent variables of job impact and work hours. I reviewed transcripts line by line to identify narrative themes. I then examined how the narratives aligned or contrasted with one another. I contextualized major themes within the 6 This dissertation spans multiple areas. This paper focuses specifically on work and care, while other papers focus on conceptions of care and carer identity, as well as navigating changes for informal caregiving in the context of COVID-19. 53 extant research, considering how they support, extend, and challenge current scholarly research and findings. 3.4 Findings 3.4.1 Quantitative results Table 3.1 describes the sample characteristics and provides evidence of the overall prevalence of career-related caregiving decisions. Slightly more than half (56%) of respondents in the sample indicate that they have adjusted their work hours to accommodate care needs in the last twelve months (56%). Turning down or not applying for a position within the last year is rarer, with only 12% reporting this outcome.7 Table 3.1 Descriptive statistics Proportion Adjusted Work Hours due to Care No 0.443*** (23.27) Yes 0.557*** (29.25) Turned down Job Opportunity due to Care No 0.878*** (64.54) Yes 0.122*** (8.96) Gender Men 0.448*** (24.12) Women 0.552*** (29.77) Age Under 25 0.0935*** (5.11) 25 to 45 0.269*** (15.99) 46+ 0.638*** (31.03) Education < High school 0.0569*** (6.01) High school grad 0.230*** (12.21) Trades certificate or diploma 0.0897*** (8.53) College/University Certificate or Diploma 0.298*** (16.78) 54 Bachelor's degree 0.227*** (13.97) Graduate/Post Graduate 0.0983*** (9.55) Marital Status Married/Common law 0.735*** (38.34) Separated/Widowed/Divorced 0.0862*** (10.40) Single 0.179*** (9.53) Standard Work Hours Full time 0.719*** (37.88) Part time 0.281*** (14.84) Occupation Management 0.121*** (10.13) Business, finance and administration 0.177*** (13.64) Natural and applied sciences and related 0.0777*** (8.12) Health 0.0815*** (8.56) Education, law and social, community 0.168*** (10.89) Art, culture, recreation and sport 0.0392*** (4.45) Sales and Service 0.201*** (11.15) Trades, transport and equipment operators 0.0834*** (8.85) Natural resources, agriculture and related production 0.0179*** (3.72) Manufacturing and utilities 0.0327*** (4.04) Children in Household No 0.512*** (27.22) Yes 0.488*** (25.91) Frequency of Care Daily 0.192*** (12.14) Weekly 0.589*** (30.91) Monthly 0.150*** (9.47) Less than once per month 0.0689*** (6.48) Transportation No 0.145*** (9.34) Yes 0.855*** (54.98) Meals No 0.392*** (20.30) Yes 0.608*** Household Maintenance No 0.434*** (22.44) Yes 0.566*** (29.25) Personal Care No 0.641*** (34.73) Yes 0.359*** (19.48) Scheduling/Coordinating 55 Yes 0.525*** (27.99) Bills/Banking No 0.610*** (31.84) Yes 0.390*** (20.33) Visiting No 0.0333** (2.70) Yes 0.967*** (78.36) Emotional Support No 0.0772*** (5.87) Yes 0.923*** (70.11) Unionized Workplace No 0.694*** (39.20) Yes 0.306*** (17.32) Born in Canada No 0.147*** (10.27) Yes 0.853*** (59.83) Visible Minority Status No 0.892*** (66.67) Yes 0.108*** (8.09) N (rounded) 1,639,000 t statistics in parentheses * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 Initial model results Table 3.2 presents a series of nested models estimating the relationship between age and the likelihood that a respondent adjusted work hours in the last 12 months due to care responsibilities. I begin by considering the bivariate relationship between age and adjustments to work hours (Model 1). I then include type and frequency of care (Model 2), followed by job characteristics such as union and occupation (Model 3), and finally include additional controls (Model 4). Model 1 suggests that young carers are less likely than their older counterparts to have adjusted their work hours in the past twelve months due to their care responsibilities, with respondents 56 under 25 (27 percentage points) and those aged 25 to 45 (8 percentage points) less likely than those 46+ to have made such adjustments. Adding indicators of the frequency and type of care (Model 2), renders this relationship not significant, with coefficients much smaller for carers under 25, and reversing in sign (for careers aged 25-45). Differences in the types of care provided across career age cohorts thus appears to account for the age differences, with younger careers less likely to perform the types of care that are associated with adjustments to work hours in the past 12 months. Adding additional controls in Models 3, and 4, does not change this picture—there remains no significant age cohort differences in likelihood of adjusting work hours due to care responsibilities in the last 12 months. Across models, we see that carers who perform household maintenance, personal care, and emotional support are significantly more likely than those who do not to indicate they have adjusted their work hours. By the final model, individuals who assist with meals emerge as 9 percentage points less likely to state that they adjusted work hours than those who do not. Type of care, more so than age of the caregiver, appears to matter, and gender does not appear as significant in this model. Table 3.3 uses the same nested model approach to explore the extent to which carers indicate that they have turned down or not applied for jobs or promotions in the last 12 months due to care responsibilities. There are no significant differences between younger workers and their 46+ counterparts in the likelihood of experiencing career advancement impacts regardless of model specification. Instead, Models 2, 3 and 4 suggest that the likelihood of experiencing career advancement impacts differs by frequency and type of care. Respondents who perform care on a weekly or monthly basis are less likely to report that they missed career opportunities than people who perform care daily. Once all controls have been added, respondents who provide 57 household maintenance or scheduling/coordinating are approximately 5 percentage points more likely than those who do not to indicate foregone career opportunities. Additionally, in Model 4, gender and education emerge as statistically significant. All-else equal, women are more likely than men (7 percentage points) and those with a Bachelor’s degree (10 percentage points) or Graduate degree (9 percentage points) more likely than respondents with a College or University diploma to experience career advancement impacts in the last 12 months due to care responsibilities. Together, the results of the models in Tables 3.2 and 3.3 indicate that, when controlling for frequency and type of care, younger adult carers are as likely to adjust work hours or experience career advancement impacts as their older counterparts aged 46+. Table 3.2 Differences in work hours for eldercare providers Work Hours Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Age (46+) Under 25 -0.274*** -0.0553 -0.0447 -0.0182 (0.0685) (0.0986) (0.103) (0.113) 25 to 45 -0.0779* 0.0493 0.0537 0.0501 (0.0359) (0.0385) (0.0394) (0.0402) Frequency of care (Daily) Weekly 0.0246 0.0165 0.0176 (0.0450) (0.0469) (0.0468) Monthly -0.0825 -0.0845 -0.0819 (0.0583) (0.0613) (0.0631) Less than once per month -0.00161 0.00877 -0.00991 (0.0929) (0.0892) (0.0883) Transportation 0.0949+ 0.0875 0.0933+ (0.0539) (0.0556) (0.0555) Meals -0.0715+ -0.0803* -0.0896* (0.0377) (0.0377) (0.0390) Maintenance 0.0938** 0.116** 0.124*** (0.0356) (0.0357) (0.0357) 58 Work Hours Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Personal Care 0.142*** 0.140*** 0.138*** (0.0403) (0.0402) (0.0407) Scheduling/Coordinating 0.121** 0.129** 0.129** (0.0417) (0.0416) (0.0425) Bills/Banking 0.102** 0.0727+ 0.0722+ (0.0385) (0.0384) (0.0393) Visit -0.0652 -0.0571 -0.0733 (0.153) (0.157) (0.156) Emotional support 0.139* 0.133* 0.144* (0.0639) (0.0641) (0.0624) Union -0.0418 -0.0376 (0.0398) (0.0391) Occupation (Management) Business, Finance and Administration 0.0500 0.0369 (0.0597) (0.0601) Natural and applied sciences and related -0.00830 -0.0107 (0.0768) (0.0776) Health -0.171* -0.196** (0.0737) (0.0737) Education, Law, and Social Community -0.0111 -0.0174 (0.0653) (0.0683) Art, Culture, Recreation and Sport 0.0182 -0.00877 (0.135) (0.127) Sales and Service -0.00337 -0.0149 (0.0653) (0.0667) Trades, Transport and Equipment Operators -0.156* -0.172* (0.0748) (0.0774) Natural resources, agriculture, and related production -0.0958 -0.0890 (0.152) (0.149) Manufacturing and utilities -0.0817 -0.0878 (0.137) (0.141) Gender (Men) Women 0.0149 (0.0452) Education (College/University Certificate or Diploma) < High school -0.0631 (0.0926) High school grad -0.0353 (0.0538) Trades certificate or diploma 0.0825 (0.0655) Bachelor's degree -0.0159 59 Work Hours Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 (0.0497) Graduate/Post Graduate -0.0384 (0.0611) Constant 0.603*** 0.232 0.280 0.358 (0.0180) (0.187) (0.196) (0.243) N (rounded) 2479000 1741000 1677000 1663000 Standard errors in parentheses Note: + p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 Additional control variables included in Model 4: Marital Status, Presence of Children in the Home, Born in Canada, and Visible Minority status 60 Table 3.3 Differences in career advancement for eldercare providers Career Advancement Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Age (46+) Under 25 -0.0494 0.0591 0.0814 -0.0000102 (0.0433) (0.0642) (0.0725) (0.0800) 25 to 45 0.0270 0.0334 0.0360 0.0164 (0.0282) (0.0273) (0.0281) (0.0267) Frequency of care (Daily) Weekly -0.0926* -0.101* -0.104* (0.0415) (0.0420) (0.0418) Monthly -0.0940+ -0.104* -0.103* (0.0525) (0.0515) (0.0504) Less than once per month -0.0969+ -0.112* -0.130* (0.0516) (0.0537) (0.0547) Transportation -0.0206 -0.0212 -0.0173 (0.0389) (0.0389) (0.0386) Meals 0.0473* 0.0427+ 0.0255 (0.0221) (0.0223) (0.0228) Maintenance 0.0334 0.0422+ 0.0574* (0.0240) (0.0241) (0.0239) Personal Care 0.0396 0.0237 0.0181 (0.0271) (0.0276) (0.0280) Scheduling/Coordinating 0.0529* 0.0517* 0.0502* (0.0248) (0.0254) (0.0250) Bills/Banking 0.0618* 0.0457+ 0.0439+ (0.0257) (0.0258) (0.0263) Visit 0.0206 0.0293 0.0325 (0.0519) (0.0590) (0.0596) Emotional support 0.0392 0.0405 0.0283 (0.0274) (0.0300) (0.0299) Union -0.0270 -0.0230 (0.0295) (0.0287) Occupation (Management) Business, Finance and Administration 0.0726+ 0.0612 (0.0383) (0.0374) Natural and applied sciences and related 0.0745 0.0828 (0.0568) (0.0523) Health -0.00377 -0.0169 (0.0387) (0.0396) Education, Law, and Social Community 0.0793 0.0405 (0.0519) (0.0484) Art, Culture, Recreation and Sport 0.120 0.0980 61 Career Advancement Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 (0.0817) (0.0858) Sales and Service 0.00873 0.0110 (0.0372) (0.0363) Trades, Transport and Equipment Operators -0.0219 0.0290 (0.0328) (0.0377) Natural resources, agriculture, and related production -0.00226 0.0328 (0.0833) (0.0839) Manufacturing and utilities -0.0634 -0.0472 (0.0398) (0.0418) Gender (Men) Women 0.0710** (0.0270) Education (College/University Certificate or Diploma) < High school 0.00712 (0.0474) High school grad 0.0285 (0.0304) Trades certificate or diploma 0.0370 (0.0394) Bachelor's degree 0.104** (0.0353) Graduate/Post Graduate 0.0947* (0.0455) Constant 0.148*** 0.0321 0.0134 -0.0223 (0.0134) (0.0722) (0.0836) (0.110) N (rounded) 2621000 1830000 1758000 1728000 Standard errors in parentheses Note: + p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 Additional control variables included in Model 4: Marital Status, Presence of Children in the Home, Born in Canada, and Visible Minority status Differences by age cohort The analysis thus far has focused on overall differences (or lack thereof) in care-related work adjustments by cohort. It presumes, however, that the effect of particular determinants of care are consistent across cohorts. To assess whether this is the case, Tables 3.4 and 3.5 estimate nested models predicting work adjustments separately for younger adult carers (aged 25–45) and their 62 older counterparts (46+), focusing in particular on whether the association between gender and care, and the degree to which this is explained by other covariates, differs across cohorts. Table 3.4 reveals no significant gender difference in making adjustments to work hours. Although in the bivariate model women aged 46+ are 8 percentage points more likely than men to indicate that they adjusted their work hours in the last 12 months, the effect disappears when covariates for frequency and type of care are introduced. For younger workers, two forms of care emerge as significant predictors of work hour adjustments: providing maintenance and personal care. Among older carers, those who perform maintenance are also more likely to have adjusted their work hours. In addition, scheduling/coordinating, bills/banking, and providing emotional support are associated with work hour adjustments. When comparing the results between the two models, coefficients for performing maintenance are not significantly different across cohorts, but those for performing personal care and doing bills and banking are. The types of care tasks that matter for hours adjustments thus appear to differ for younger and older workers. Table 3.5 compares the results of the nested models for my second dependent variable, career advancement impacts, across age cohorts. As with adjusting work hours, gender is not associated with differences in experiencing career advancement impacts in the last 12 months for younger adult careers. Gender does remain significant across all four models for older carers, with women 10 percentage points more likely than men to have experienced career advancement impacts when controlling for all factors considered in the models. However, the difference in gender coefficients across the two age cohorts is not significant. As with the results in Table 3.4, the results in Table 3.5 indicate that the types of care that emerge as significant differ by age cohort. Younger adult workers who provide transportation (9 63 percentage points) and scheduling/coordinating (12 percentage points) are more likely than those who do not to have experienced career advancement impacts in the past twelve months, while older carers who provide assistance with bills/banking are 9 percentage points more likely than those who do not to see recent career advancement impacts. In relation to their respective reference categories (college or university diploma), younger carers with a bachelor’s degree and older carers with a graduate degree are more likely to have experienced career advancement impacts. Thus while models in Table 3.2 failed to find significant differences in the likelihood that younger and older carers adjusted their work hours or experienced career advancement impacts due to care responsibilities in the last 12 months, some determinants of these impacts do appear to differ by cohort. Additionally, higher levels of education are associated with greater career advancement impacts for eldercare providers in both age cohorts.64 Table 3.4 Adjustments to work hours by age cohort Work Hours—Carers Aged 25-45 Work Hours—Carers Aged 46+ Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Gender (Men) Women 0.0268 0.0525 0.0444 0.0877 0.0814* 0.0571 0.0434 0.0689 (0.0681) (0.0669) (0.0766) (0.0788) (0.0374) (0.0408) (0.0442) (0.0439) Frequency of care (Daily) Weekly 0.182* 0.136 0.129 -0.0347 -0.0339 -0.0381 (0.0885) (0.0956) (0.0978) (0.0486) (0.0497) (0.0480) Monthly 0.121 0.0854 0.0738 -0.0630 -0.0845 -0.0869 (0.102) (0.103) (0.111) (0.0723) (0.0741) (0.0740) Less than once per month -0.0676 -0.0476 -0.0673 -0.0901 -0.0716 -0.111 (0.117) (0.121) (0.130) (0.0894) (0.0887) (0.0868) Transportation 0.141+ 0.160+ 0.152+ 0.0978 0.0784 0.0780 (0.0845) (0.0862) (0.0868) (0.0647) (0.0644) (0.0645) Meals -0.0715 -0.107 -0.119+ -0.0639 -0.0658 -0.0782+ (0.0725) (0.0712) (0.0699) (0.0434) (0.0438) (0.0430) Maintenance 0.185** 0.194** 0.198** 0.0713+ 0.0821+ 0.0945* (0.0667) (0.0697) (0.0719) (0.0424) (0.0422) (0.0416) Personal Care 0.255*** 0.259*** 0.254*** 0.0343 0.0385 0.0438 (0.0682) (0.0663) (0.0694) (0.0431) (0.0444) (0.0436) Scheduling/Coordinating 0.100 0.0943 0.103 0.125* 0.144** 0.141** (0.0747) (0.0744) (0.0737) (0.0508) (0.0501) (0.0497) Bills/Banking -0.0334 -0.0213 -0.00800 0.167*** 0.136** 0.141** (0.0788) (0.0787) (0.0794) (0.0445) (0.0459) (0.0454) Visit 0.165 0.158 0.200 0.00831 0.00193 -0.0423 (0.191) (0.327) (0.326) (0.111) (0.113) (0.116) 65 Work Hours—Carers Aged 25-45 Work Hours—Carers Aged 46+ Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Emotional support 0.157 0.124 0.100 0.155* 0.149+ 0.150+ (0.125) (0.127) (0.131) (0.0785) (0.0771) (0.0768) Union -0.0542 -0.0550 -0.0390 -0.0254 (0.0640) (0.0671) (0.0430) (0.0405) Occupation (Management) Business, Finance and Administration 0.188 0.130 -0.0165 -0.0357 (0.123) (0.124) (0.0662) (0.0641) Natural and applied sciences and related 0.181 0.128 -0.0707 -0.0870 (0.143) (0.149) (0.0875) (0.0842) Health -0.0276 -0.0426 -0.241** -0.272** (0.146) (0.147) (0.0915) (0.0828) Education, Law, and Social Community 0.149 0.130 -0.0538 -0.101 (0.128) (0.125) (0.0748) (0.0745) Art, Culture, Recreation and Sport -0.109 -0.193 -0.111 -0.161 (0.210) (0.194) (0.115) (0.116) Sales and Service 0.0313 -0.106 -0.00595 0.00522 (0.131) (0.139) (0.0717) (0.0715) Trades, Transport and Equipment Operators -0.0243 -0.110 -0.149 -0.113 (0.139) (0.154) (0.0976) (0.0944) Natural resources, agriculture, and related production -0.0917 -0.196 -0.0705 -0.0140 (0.334) (0.313) (0.188) (0.155) Manufacturing and utilities -0.218 -0.259 -0.145 -0.120 (0.188) (0.191) (0.130) (0.131) Education (College/University Certificate or Diploma) < High school 0.258 -0.209* (0.179) (0.102) 66 Work Hours—Carers Aged 25-45 Work Hours—Carers Aged 46+ Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 High school grad 0.0158 -0.0500 (0.100) (0.0563) Trades certificate or diploma -0.0538 0.0831 (0.119) (0.0734) Bachelor's degree -0.0950 0.0492 (0.0865) (0.0533) Graduate/Post Graduate -0.0667 0.00940 (0.123) (0.0662) Constant 0.511*** -0.202 -0.169 -0.0584 0.560*** 0.169 0.275+ 0.357* (0.0468) (0.212) (0.361) (0.393) (0.0278) (0.137) (0.149) (0.172) N (rounded) 719000 457000 445000 442000 1366000 1114000 1078000 1068000 Standard errors in parentheses Note: +p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001 Italics identify significant differences between models " Additional control variables included in Model 4: Marital Status, Presence of Children in the Home, Born in Canada, and Visible Minority status 67 Table 3.5 Adjustments to career advancement impacts by age cohort Career Advancement Impacts—Carers Aged 25 to 45 Career Advancement Impacts—Carers Aged 46+ Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Gender (Men) Women -0.0360 -0.0126 -0.00599 0.00519 0.0837** 0.0975*** 0.0925** 0.0981** (0.0477) (0.0535) (0.0640) (0.0600) (0.0266) (0.0266) (0.0285) (0.0299) Frequency of care (Daily) Weekly -0.0546 -0.0961 -0.0835 -0.0524 -0.0497 -0.0467 (0.0727) (0.0739) (0.0659) (0.0371) (0.0384) (0.0395) Monthly -0.0851 -0.118 -0.106 0.00999 -0.00209 0.00588 (0.0811) (0.0821) (0.0706) (0.0591) (0.0551) (0.0545) Less than once per month -0.0811 -0.109 -0.147+ -0.0404 -0.0327 -0.0403 (0.0850) (0.0870) (0.0853) (0.0512) (0.0540) (0.0562) Transportation 0.0877** 0.0899* 0.0867* -0.0462 -0.0585 -0.0539 (0.0332) (0.0353) (0.0372) (0.0484) (0.0493) (0.0512) Meals 0.0974* 0.0929* 0.0516 0.0121 0.0113 0.0158 (0.0452) (0.0454) (0.0439) (0.0245) (0.0242) (0.0247) Maintenance 0.0549 0.0491 0.0611 0.0685** 0.0663** 0.0701** (0.0437) (0.0449) (0.0451) (0.0239) (0.0251) (0.0250) Personal Care -0.0648 -0.0560 -0.0406 0.0346 0.0286 0.0334 (0.0543) (0.0506) (0.0491) (0.0307) (0.0314) (0.0322) Scheduling/Coordinating 0.149** 0.152** 0.115* 0.0173 0.0159 0.0197 (0.0561) (0.0548) (0.0501) (0.0266) (0.0274) (0.0275) Bills/Banking -0.0127 -0.0381 -0.0349 0.101*** 0.0923*** 0.0904** (0.0651) (0.0646) (0.0560) (0.0272) (0.0274) (0.0281) Visit -0.119 -0.141 -0.162 0.0363 0.0334 0.0415 (0.207) (0.282) (0.240) (0.0497) (0.0530) (0.0568) 68 Career Advancement Impacts—Carers Aged 25 to 45 Career Advancement Impacts—Carers Aged 46+ Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Emotional support 0.0565 0.0378 0.0187 0.0277 0.0138 0.00726 (0.0676) (0.0746) (0.0683) (0.0314) (0.0321) (0.0319) Union 0.0228 0.0112 -0.0273 -0.0267 (0.0535) (0.0502) (0.0312) (0.0315) Occupation (Management) Business, Finance and Administration 0.0202 0.0604 0.0618 0.0645 (0.0866) (0.0857) (0.0434) (0.0428) Natural and applied sciences and related 0.0955 0.0557 0.0465 0.0445 (0.130) (0.112) (0.0543) (0.0527) Health -0.102 -0.0438 0.00838 0.00755 (0.0814) (0.0818) (0.0470) (0.0500) Education, Law, and Social Community 0.0114 -0.0107 0.0105 -0.0105 (0.106) (0.0991) (0.0524) (0.0495) Art, Culture, Recreation and Sport -0.0169 0.0119 0.176+ 0.167 (0.143) (0.147) (0.104) (0.105) Sales and Service -0.0659 -0.106 0.0517 0.0655 (0.0801) (0.0788) (0.0405) (0.0405) Trades, Transport and Equipment Operators -0.0651 -0.0380 0.0177 0.0573 (0.0854) (0.0979) (0.0330) (0.0394) Natural resources, agriculture, and related production -0.208+ -0.165 0.136 0.166 (0.117) (0.110) (0.104) (0.104) Manufacturing and utilities -0.0446 -0.00440 -0.0775* -0.0594 (0.106) (0.0979) (0.0356) (0.0394) Education (College/University Certificate or Diploma) < High school -0.0373 -0.0202 (0.0750) (0.0525) 69 Career Advancement Impacts—Carers Aged 25 to 45 Career Advancement Impacts—Carers Aged 46+ Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 High school grad 0.0658 0.0341 (0.0626) (0.0336) Trades certificate or diploma 0.0401 -0.0142 (0.0806) (0.0427) Bachelor's degree 0.129* 0.0579 (0.0567) (0.0390) Graduate/Post Graduate 0.0188 0.115* (0.0881) (0.0549) Constant 0.194*** 0.0448 0.139 0.280 0.102*** -0.0361 -0.0259 -0.0643 (0.0380) (0.229) (0.306) (0.280) (0.0178) (0.0779) (0.0782) (0.113) N (rounded) 800000 500000 481000 467000 1420000 1155000 1116000 1104000 Standard errors in parentheses Note: +p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001 Italics indicate significant differences between models Additional control variables included in Model 4: Marital Status, Presence of Children in the Home, Born in Canada, and Visible Minority status 70 3.4.2 Qualitative findings The quantitative estimates presented in the previous section provide a descriptive picture of differences in career-decisions among carers. Adjustments to work hours and career advancement impacts differ by type of care, and the care effects differ across age cohorts. Additionally, the quantitative results suggest that highly educated carers may be more likely to experience job impacts than those with lower levels of education. My qualitative analyses shed further light on these dynamics by illuminating how carers think about and reflect on the interplay between work and care in their lives. Adjustments to work hours At least half of eldercare providers in the GSS indicated that they had adjusted their work hours in the past twelve months due to care responsibilities (see Table 3.1), with younger adult carers as likely as older carers to make such adjustments. My qualitative findings reinforce that younger adult eldercare providers are consciously adjusting their work in relation to care. As Julie explained, when I asked if she had ever made changes to her work because of care: “Yes. Yeah, 100%. Like with [employer] I was a casual worker so that I could be there…” (Julie). Julie specifically choose a position that allowed her to work flexible hours by opting into a casual role. She and her parents had a regular system for balancing her work days and ensuring she could block off any days she would be unavailable: “We would sit down with our calendars—because I had to put in my availability every month and so we would sit down with our calendars and go 71 over which days they had doctor’s appointments and then I would book those days off as well as the scheduled days that I would normally be off.” (Julie) Beyond simply requesting time off as needed, Julie coordinated her work schedule to accommodate transportation and appointments. Choosing a casual position meant that she had more control over her schedule and availability. Another respondent, Alexandra, explained that she specifically sought seasonal or casual positions that allowed her to take substantial time off, as her care responsibilities are primarily seasonal: “Yeah, it's hard because I find jobs that I can, I know I'm going to be able to get the winter off with.” (Alexandra) She went on to explain that while she had tried to coordinate time off from regular positions with employers previously, even if they agreed at the point of hire, when it came to needing several months away, she was ultimately asked to quit. Rather than fighting with an employer for time off, she chose instead to pursue seasonal work: “From that point on that's where I decided OK, I'm going to get these jobs that are summer long and I can get on EI if I need to.” (Alexandra) These carers were explicitly altering and planning their work hours in relation to their care responsibilities, making adjustments where needed and opting into positions that allowed them more control over their schedule. While scholars have documented the shortcomings of casual work and its associated precarity (Halpin, 2015; Vosko, 2010), some informal eldercare providers do seem to rely on the autonomy it can provide—particularly since not everyone can access the type of positions that permit flexibility. Indeed, such flexibility—specifically, 72 “voluntary employee-driven flexibility” (Jacobs and Gerson, 2004 as cited in Luhr 2020, p. 261) is generally associated with corporate or white collar settings (Correll et al., 2014; E. Kelly et al., 2010). Although carers spoke about adjusting work hours in relation to care, several—such as Julie and Alexandra—chose fields or types of work explicitly because of their care needs. In this regard, they are also shaping their long-term career trajectory around care. The effect is not simply one of hours alone, but rather of selecting the type of work that makes it easier to navigate care responsibilities. Career advancement impacts The quantitative results indicate that a smaller proportion of carers (12%) experienced career advancement impacts in the past twelve months (refer to Table 3.1). Interviews help elucidate additional reasons for younger adult carers to turn down opportunities, such as the need to remain in close geographic proximity to family members who require care. Several interview respondents spoke about turning down or not applying for positions that would take them too far away from their parents, which can limit job prospects, especially in fields that tend to require relocation. This challenge was particularly pronounced among highly educated respondents, in part because senior level positions may be less common and/or more concentrated in larger cities. As one professional explained, her decision to stay near her father means that she simply cannot apply for many positions in her field, even when they do come up: “The fact that I cannot get a faculty position is so heavy, cause I really, really want it, and I’ve wanted it for so long, but I can’t. I can’t. As long as my dad is 73 alive, we cannot move…I’ve been looking at a position, a faculty position in [larger city], but I wouldn’t move.” (Suzanne) Not only is her immediate career impacted by her care responsibilities, but for Suzanne, this geographic restriction has also resulted in underemployment, which can have longer term consequences for earning potential and economic stability over the life course. Another respondent spoke about the struggle she faced to change her plans when her father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and she could no longer relocate to a new job: “I had been planning to work in [new location] and had obtained a job for the fall and had made plans to start getting all of the things in order to make that possible, and [Spouse]’s parents asked us not to move… it feels like I was able to set all of those things up and all of my plans and then they’ve just kind of, you know…everything was working out just the way I’d wanted it to and then you can’t plan for cancer.” (Samantha) For this individual, staying in close proximity to her in-laws meant that she had to continue applying for positions in a less desirable market, creating financial and logistical challenges as well as long term career implications. As she explains: “And [current location], in terms of like a community where you can get a job, is way less stable than [new location]. There are more jobs to be had, but they’re kind of short term and you bounce around a lot more whereas this was just a sure path to having a secure job and I would have made more money. It’s more expensive to work in [current location] than it is to work in [new location]. So for sure there are financial implications and it’s just kind of sad to have made these plans and have to reevaluate all of a sudden because his parents need us. And they will need us in the next year.” (Samantha) 74 Samantha had explicitly designed her schooling and career trajectory based on seeking a position that would maximize her earning potential and job security—based on finding a “good” job—and the care responsibilities she faced suddenly shifted her ability to access the geographic location that would improve her job environment. Providing care that requires physical proximity can limit the career options available to younger adult carers. Gender and work-care decision-making Overall, when considering the quantitative results, women were more likely than men to indicate that they experience career advancement impacts (refer to Table 3.3), but this effect does not appear to remain significant for younger care providers. The interviews revealed more subtle gender dynamics for younger carers than are evident in the quantitative data. Although both men and women interviewed stated that they adjust their work in some way because of care, how those decisions manifest does seem to differ by gender for many respondents. The qualitative findings illuminate gendered effects in career decision making whereby men try to find ways to fit care into their work, while women design or shift their career to fit their care responsibilities. Women spoke openly about not applying for jobs due to care responsibilities, or explicitly choosing work environments because of their need for flexible, casual, or seasonal hours, but the men I interviewed did not. As one respondent explains, he had not and likely would not turn down a promotion due to his care responsibilities: “I never refuse a rank. But each time I have a new rank it’s more job. And it’s tough for me to refuse a new rank, because I like that. And I like to work and I like my work, but it’s now more difficult to manage all my life with my work. Because I have always more responsibilities. And that’s why—I don't know, I’m not sure. For sure I don’t want a new rank…But you know it’s a big 75 decision. I love my job and I love my family too, and it’s difficult to make a decision—what is my priority: Is it my family or my job or my parents?” (Phillip) Phillip indicated that career progression has been important to him, but he acknowledged that navigating his work and family priorities grows more difficult as he moves up the corporate ladder. He was beginning to examine how he might make those decision in the future, and had to evaluate his priorities among career and care. Several of the men I spoke with set clear boundaries that separated their work and care responsibilities. Although they indicated they could leave work in emergency situations, along the lines of Stecy-Hildebrandt’s findings of ‘just going’ (2021), respondents stated that they primarily scheduled care time outside of work time: “I kind of think that I try and just provide care, you know, when I'm available and when I'm at work I'm not available. So they're kind of separate to me.” (Brandon) For Brandon, providing care was outside of work hours. Similarly, James set a regular schedule and while he was generally communicating with his mother on a daily basis for a nightly phone or FaceTime chat, he tended to provide in-person care once per week: “I go there Sunday because it works for her, it usually works around my schedule, and then, she’s got all of her errands that I got to do.” (James) While they were able to limit the extent to which they provided care during their work hours, both Brandon and James spoke about relying on their sisters to take on the more frequent (and potentially work-interrupting) care responsibilities. 76 The men and women I spoke with were all performing elder care and all had to find some way to navigate care and work. Whether they were turning down positions or not applying for jobs in their field due to geographic constraints, or opting into casual or seasonal labour to ensure they could accommodate specific care schedules and responsibilities, women were consistently shaping their careers around care. Conversely, the men I spoke with attempted to fit care into their schedules; they may take a meeting in the car, take a day off, or spend a Sunday doing household maintenance, but they did not substantively change their career trajectory due to care responsibilities 3.5 Discussion Younger adult eldercare providers are a growing cohort in Canada (Patterson & Margolis, 2019), and investigating how they navigate their care and career responsibilities is critical for understanding the long term career implications of care. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, I explored the extent to which younger adult carers make adjustments to their work due to their care responsibilities. The quantitative analysis suggests that, overall, younger adult care providers are no less likely, compared to carers 46+, to adjust their work hours or experience job impacts due to care provision. My findings provide deeper insight into the nuances of career-related decision making. Both men and women may adjust work hours to suit care activities, as evidenced by the quantitative results, which show no gender difference in the likelihood to have altered work hours in the past twelve months. The qualitative findings, however, suggest that how individuals enact adjustments to work hours may differ by gender, with men adopting a case-by-case approach to navigating work/care conflicts rather than a holistic adjustment to work on an ongoing basis. 77 In terms of path selection as well as upward mobility, women’s career trajectories seem to be shaped by care requirements, while men seem to find ways to fit care into their work. While the quantitative data results indicate that career advancement impacts do not differ by gender for younger adult carers, the qualitative interviews provide insight into the myriad ways that younger women plan and navigate career decisions throughout their life course. Similar to previous studies, such US data compiled by the Pew Research Centre (Parker, 2015), my qualitative results suggest that women may pursue a career trajectory that allows them to navigate their care responsibilities, even if that results in underemployment. Performing specific types of care, particularly ones that require physical proximity such as transportation, can restrict geographic mobility and, in doing so, limit the career options. Women without specific professional career paths may opt into casual or seasonal work that allows them to more effectively control and align their schedule with their care responsibilities. These findings support similar insights from previous studies of younger adult carers, in particular the work of Dellmann-Jenkins, Blankemeyer and Pinkard (2001), whose quantitative results suggested a similar proportion of respondents indicating that they missed out on promotion opportunities (15% in their study versus 12% in the present study), and whose interviewees indicated that geographic constraints limited their career options. In their study, some 25% of interviewees identified that not being able to relocate meant that their job prospects were limited. The two decades between these studies have seen changes to work structure—particularly in terms of increased flexibility and carer support—and yet even though work contexts have changed, younger adult eldercare providers continue to face challenges to a consistent career 78 trajectory (McLaughlin et al., 2019; Sadavoy et al., 2022). These results reinforce the relevance of studying the lived experience of younger eldercare providers, as scholars are collectively demonstrating that there are unique challenges facing this group. Furthermore, the long-term implications of early career disruption may pose additional difficulties for carers. Several studies indicate that younger eldercare providers experience greater financial strain than their older counterparts (Koumoutzis et al., 2021; McLaughlin et al., 2019), while econometric modelling suggests that carers who take leave or reduce hours due to care responsibilities may find returning difficult, and may experience wage penalties upon their return (Skira, 2015). My findings add to this growing body of literature by highlighting that, particularly among women, eldercare considerations play a central role in shaping in career-related decision making. How we understand the consequences of providing eldercare as a younger adult, however, remains an important consideration. As with recent findings on the gender differences in work-family conflict for parents (Young et al., 2022), the interplay between care and career-decision making for eldercare providers involves similar nuances and path-dependent choices. For example, recent research on work-family conflict among mothers and fathers reveals that despite quantitative studies suggesting equitable difficulties in balancing work and care responsibilities among parents, “mothers make adjustments to their paid work demands by reducing work hours in an attempt to balance work and family, thereby avoiding conflicts. Thus, we argue that mothers’ responses to survey questions about work-life conflicts at subsequent waves may be influenced by prior decisions about work demands that help reduce conflict” (Young et al., 2022, p. 21). Essentially, large sample survey results that appear to show mothers and fathers facing similar levels of work-family conflict can only do so because mothers have made a priori career 79 choices that allow them to reduce their conflict levels overall—similar to the results of the present study, whereby women are choosing career paths or altering their career trajectories to minimize work and care conflicts. While the extant literature on eldercare is only beginning to study younger carers (Koumoutzis et al., 2021), the same gendered challenge seems evident in the present study. Several of the women in my study specifically selected careers or fields of work that would minimize the work-family conflict they faced, and in doing so they reduced the likelihood that they might respond in the affirmative to survey questions about job impacts due to care. As with the approach in studying the impacts of parenthood on career and work-related penalties, taking a holistic life course perspective to studying eldercare can help to better reflect the long-term implications for younger adult carers over time. 3.5.1 Limitations While the prevalence of younger adult eldercare providers has been increasing over time, they still remain a relatively small group and are often considered a harder to reach population (D’Amen et al., 2021). Small sample sizes for both the quantitative and qualitative data in this study limit my ability to dig deeply into intersectional differences within and among demographic groups. The cross-sectional nature of the data poses a limitation when studying career impacts. Although cross-sectional time point estimates can provide insight into the experiences of younger care providers at their present career/life stages, such estimates do not show how care providers arrived at their current situations. In other words, cross-sectional estimates cannot fully reflect the realities of work-care conflicts because they do not capture experiences and career-related decision-making across the life course. The current decisions carers face with regard to balancing 80 work and care are in no small part dependent upon decisions that have already been made—even for younger adult carers. Ultimately, cross-sectional point-in-time estimates cannot effectively reflect compounding penalties; and further, may underestimate the long-term career implications of those penalties. Additionally, the quantitative data were collected pre-Covid, while the qualitative interviews have been conducted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Comparisons between the two findings, therefore, are complicated by the extent to which work and care have changed throughout the pandemic. However, the findings are supported by other comprehensive national studies both prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. 3.6 Conclusion Studies of work-care conflicts for eldercare providers must more effectively incorporate the experiences of younger adult carers. My findings demonstrate that these individuals are indeed making career choices in relation to care, and that women in particular are shaping their career trajectories around their eldercare responsibilities—with the potential for long term effects that may result in or contribute to gendered pay gaps. Longitudinal and multi-methods approaches to studying care may improve scholars’ understanding of the interplay between work and care as the path-dependent nature of career decision making can be better reflected using a life course perspective, particularly when care provision begins in the early stages of one’s career. 81 Chapter 4. Eldercare and Mental Labour in the COVID-19 Pandemic 4.1 Introduction “It was the worst…The worst. The worst. It was the worst.” In describing the challenges she faced when caring for children and parents throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, while working remotely and navigating school and daycare closures, Allison* does not mince words. Since the first presumptive case of the novel coronavirus in Canada was reported on January 25, 2020, national interest in the coronavirus spiked as did concerns for personal wellbeing should SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, continue to spread. In March 2020, as province after province declared states of emergency, lockdowns and public health restrictions altered the regular course of caregiving for many. We are now two years into the pandemic and while acute public health measures such as complete lockdowns are over, restrictions and disruptions to day-to-day life remain. Scholars have begun to explore the impacts of these shifts and changes on carers, and many find that the pandemic has exacerbated stress, anxiety, and somatic symptoms (e.g., headaches, fatigue, etc.) for care providers (Park 2020). The COVID-19 International health crisis complicates eldercare provision: seniors are most at risk for severe illness and death, and many Canadian jurisdictions restricted access to health services, including in-home care and support as a means to minimize virus exposure and spread. In this study, I examine how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic shaped and re-shaped informal eldercare, specifically exploring how the activities and experiences of younger adult eldercare providers (in their 20s to mid-40s) change as a result of the global crisis. I find evidence of * All names have been changed to protect respondent confidentiality. 82 mental labour as an important form of eldercare in the COVID-19 pandemic.8 By extending the concept of mental labour to this new area of study, my findings expand the applicability of the concept and offer insight into how the ‘thinking’ work of care intersects with emotion work as carers navigate relationships, agency and autonomy. 4.2 Conceptualizing eldercare Eldercare is a prevalent concern; approximately ¼ of the Canadian population aged 15 and up act as caregivers (Hardy & Omercic, 2020), and recent analyses suggest that the number of older adults needing care may double within the next decade (Canadian Medical Association & Deloitte, 2021). The increasing demand for care and assistance with aging, and the associated costs of formal care provision, means that more and more people may be facing informal care duties. Understanding carers’ experiences is essential to providing effective support to the growing proportion of the population expected to fill these care requirements. Framing the concept of care is an important consideration; what ‘counts’ as care and how can scholars best understand and measure it? Similar to other forms of family and domestic care (Daminger, 2019), eldercare has often been understood as time or task-based. Dementia caregiving in particular, and eldercare in general, tends to be framed in terms of activities of daily living (ADLs), such as bathing, feeding, personal care, etc. and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), including shopping, transportation, household maintenance, bills, etc. 8 As noted by McKeown (2021), scholars use both the terms “mental work” and “mental labour” to reflect the invisible thinking aspect of household and care work. I respect scholars’ language choices throughout when citing their work, and because I apply Robertson et al.’s (2019) concept, which they refer to as “mental labour”, I retain their terminology in my discussion of the concept. 83 (Duxbury & Higgins, 2017). However, task-based approaches to care tend to underrepresent the “thinking work” of care, often rendering it invisible—thinking or other forms of cognitive/mental labour are rarely identified as care, even among carers themselves (Daminger, 2019; Offer, 2014; Robertson, Anderson, Hall, & Kim, 2019; Shaw, 2001). Scholars are regularly evaluating the boundaries of care, and the introduction of new ‘forms’ of care provides ongoing insight into carers’ behaviours, activities, and responsibilities—along with permitting assessment of associated outcomes, consequences, and potential stressors. In developing and introducing the concept of managerial care, Rosenthal, Martin-Matthews, and Keefe (Rosenthal et al., 2007) capture the planning, anticipating, strategizing and decision making aspects of care duties in the context of navigating formal and informal eldercare, explaining how relationships between paid caregivers, family carers, and the care recipient are negotiated. By examining how different forms of care interact with one another, Rosenthal et al. (2007) helped to both identify and begin to rectify a gap in our understanding of care, as well as how we measure different care tasks. Emotional support is another important component of eldercare, although its inclusion in studies is not always consistent (Patterson & Margolis, 2019).9 As Patterson and Margolis (2019) highlight, calculating time spent providing care and identifying which demographic groups perform the most informal care hinges on whether or not emotional support is considered as care. The authors state: “our findings highlight the importance of how caregiving is defined and 9 Emotional support should not be confused with emotion work or emotional labour—concepts which are defined and distinguished in section 4.4. 84 measured for understanding caregiving as a critical aspect of the gendered life course. We find that the undercount of caregiving disproportionately affects measures of women’s caregiving, particularly when we examine an important aspect of functional solidarity (Bengtson and Roberts 1991)—emotional caregiving” (Patterson & Margolis, 2019). Even where scholars are aware that carers may be providing certain types of care, if those activities are not included—and accurately operationalized—in models, we cannot fully reflect carers’ experiences (Daminger, 2019). Thus in many ways, eldercare may be more complex and nuanced than previous time or task-based conceptions of care alone suggest. 4.3 COVID-19 and eldercare Studying eldercare in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the need for new ways of thinking about care. While the pandemic has been challenging for many, recent studies suggest that caregivers as a whole face worse outcomes than non-caregivers in terms of physical and mental health, in part due to a greater increase in stress among formal and informal caregivers, especially during the early stages of the pandemic (Park, 2021; Raile et al., 2021; Savla et al., 2021; Sheth, Lorig, Stewart, Parodi, & Ritter, 2021; Truskinovsky et al., 2021). These negative outcomes are often driven by care disruptions, where carers are engaging in fewer care tasks (on occasion framed as providing less care) or facing more frequent or increased care responsibilities (Truskinovsky et al., 2021). Navigating the disruptions to care routines, and either taking on new tasks or shifting how care tasks are completed, contributes to the stress and anxiety facing carers throughout the pandemic (Irani, Niyomyart, & Hickman, 2021). Eldercare researchers have also explored the intersections of gender and caregiving during the pandemic: Raiber and Verbakel (2021) investigated the changes in care intensity and burden 85 during the COVID-19 pandemic among care providers in the Netherlands, and considered how these changes interacted with gender differences in caregiving. They find that while women are more likely to experience a change in their caregiving provision as a result of COVID-19, either taking on more or less care during the pandemic, overall, the gender gap in eldercare provision narrows because of decreases in women’s care provision. Many studies on caregiving in COVID-19, however, suggest the opposite—women and mothers have been taking on a much greater proportion of the care responsibilities throughout the pandemic (Qian & Fuller, 2020; Raile et al., 2021; Umamaheswar & Tan, 2020). Raiber and Verbakel (2021) identify that the narrowed gap in gendered eldercare is due to a reduction in women’s caregiving tasks, rather than men taking on more. However, their study measures the self-reported amount of time spent caregiving, and a reduction in time spent on care tasks does not necessarily equate to providing less care, particularly if we take into account the mental labour required to plan alternatives for care provision. As Daminger (2019) highlighted, “time-use data…consists of participants retroactive or real-time accounts of their activities. Yet cognitive labour is often a secondary or tertiary activity carried out alongside physical actions” (p.628). It is entirely possible, then, that respondents may indicate they spent less time on care tasks, while simultaneously spending more time on the mental labour associated with care, because they were suddenly responsible for resolving unprecedented care disruptions. Indeed, Umamaheswar and Tan (2020) argue that women bore the weight of the inequitable anxiety and concern around COVID-19 exposure risk because of their caregiving responsibilities: women were more likely to consider the risks of exposure and to plan, anticipate, strategize and make decisions around care considerations, clear forms of 86 mental labour. In this way, eldercare research in the context of COVID-19 demonstrates that identifying how much care one provides may depend in part on how care is measured—or the forms of care that ‘count’. 4.4 Reflecting mental labour, emotion work, and mental load Managerial care is the closest working concept in eldercare research that resembles the concept of mental labour in family care research. Although mental labour is distinct from managerial care, which examines interconnections between formal and informal care provision, both concepts address the thinking, planning and coordinating activities that support care. Mental labour (also referred to as cognitive labour) can be understood as “thinking performed for the sake of accomplishing family goals” (Robertson et al., 2019). Mental labour as a distinct concept is relatively new in scholarly literature (McKeown, 2021). Roberston et al. (2019) offer an operationalized concept of mental labour and argue that its prevalence and weight for mothers makes it an essential form of care provision that should be included in future studies. Nevertheless, they highlight the limited research on mental labour to date and the difference in framing and operationalization of the concept at present. Part of the challenge in reflecting the function and effects of mental labour lies in the traditional task-based approach to measuring care. As Daminger (2019) explains, “common methods for studying physical housework are ill-suited to the study of cognitive labor” (628). She attributes this challenge to the both the integrated nature of task and thought, arguing that time diaries ask participants to recall activities, which predisposes people to think in an action-based way (prioritizing what they are doing), and the invisibility, even to the individual, of thinking work makes it harder to articulate and measure (McKeown, 2021). Even where scholars use innovative 87 research methods to capture domestic labour activities, they can be limited by the reality that ‘thinking work’ may be perceived as a secondary and thus not captured as a primary activity, or not reflected in time diaries because of the predominance of task-based perceptions of care (Daminger, 2019). Both Daminger (2019) and Roberston et al. (2019) offer frameworks for evaluating and measuring mental labour, which Daminger (2019) refers to as cognitive labour. In her study of 35 couples, Daminger (2019) outlines a four-part “sequence of anticipation, identification, decision-making, and monitoring” (p.618), which can be iterative and temporally varied but tends to flow in a consistent direction. Robertson et al. (2019) provide a more detailed breakdown of various forms of mental labour, based on their focus group study with mothers of young children. They argue that mental labour is distinct from other forms of household work and care, and that the thinking activities tend to fall into 6 categories: “a) planning and strategizing, b) monitoring and anticipating needs, c) metaparenting, d) knowing, e) managerial thinking, and f) self-regulating” (p.196). Both frameworks address issues of anticipating, deciding, and monitoring, and there is alignment in that each study focuses on the thinking and organizing aspects of mental labour. Scholars at the forefront of studying mental labour are explicit in their distinctions between mental labour and emotion work (Daminger, 2019; McKeown, 2021; Robertson et al., 2019). Emotion work, as conceived of by Hochschild (1983), refers to the regulation of one’s own 88 emotions and the management of others’ emotions to achieve specific ends.10 In other words, when people behave in strategic ways to elicit specific responses, they are performing emotion work. Defined variously as “the act of mood or affect regulation” (Daminger, 2019), the “management of emotional climate (R. J. Erickson, 2005, p. 338), and the “manipulation of emotion to achieve impression management” (McKeown, 2021), emotion work is another facet of invisible labour (Hatton, 2017). While the two concepts of mental labour and emotion work describe different aspects of care, they may also be intricately connected with one another. A recent study suggests that emotion work is directly tied to both mental labour itself as well as to its performance and its outcomes (Dean, Churchill, & Ruppanner, 2021; McKeown, 2021). Dean et al. (2021) argue that emotional labour and cognitive labour (their terms) not only always accompany each other, but together constitute the concept of “mental load”—yet another separate and distinct concept with which scholars need grapple and carefully navigate. The authors ultimately argue for a more comprehensive and interconnected conception of the ‘mental load’ that represents both mental labour and its apparently invariable emotional component. While specific caregiving-related research on mental labour and mental load has, to date, focused predominantly on household reproductive duties such as domestic responsibilities, parenting and childcare (Daminger, 2019; Dean et al., 2021; McKeown, 2021; Offer, 2014; Robertson et al., 10 One of multiple components of Hochschild’s larger social theory of emotion, emotion work is different than emotional labour and the distinction between the two concepts pertains to the capitalist exploitation of the emotional management performed. While emotion work is related to personal relationships in ones’ life, emotional labour takes place in the market sphere. Whereas both emotion work and emotional labour “[call] for the coordination of mind and feeling…Emotional labour…is sold for a wage and therefore has exchange value” (1983: 7). 89 2019), these concepts can be productively applied to the context of eldercare and could offer valuable insight and understanding into the experiences of informal eldercare providers, particularly in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reproductive care and eldercare face similar challenges in reflecting the nuances of care that is not explicitly task or time-based, and the experience of eldercare in the pandemic suggests that mental labour is more prevalent than ever before. This study sheds light on the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic for informal eldercare providers by exploring the centrality of mental labour to eldercare research, offering a deeper understanding of the prevalence of mental labour in multiple forms of care provision. 4.5 Methods 4.5.1 Data I conducted 29 semi-structured interviews with 21 employed or recently employed informal eldercare providers (individual who provide some type of help, support, or care to parents or grandparents). Data collection began prior to and continued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviews conducted between November 2019 and February 2020 were in person, and were generally held in coffee shops, restaurants, or for some participants in meeting rooms at their workplace. COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures forced a transition to telephone or online interviews depending on the respondent’s preference. I used a cell phone, Skype for Business or Microsoft Teams to host video interviews. I used purposive sampling techniques to recruit participants; I connected with seniors’ organizations and caregiver resource providers asking them to a distribute the flyer and/or study details to their clientele. I also shared my recruiting poster through social media (Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn), as well as shared the flyer with colleagues who distributed among 90 their workplaces or to people they thought may be interested in participating. The study was also publicized by the Family Caregivers of British Columbia, a non-profit support service for informal care providers. After participating, several interviewees recommended additional participants, typically spouses or siblings who perform similar care (n=10). The remaining study participants responded to the social media posts or newsletter (n=6), or heard about the study via word of mouth through friends or colleagues (n=5). Eight respondents agreed to participate in second interviews and the responses from those interviews are included as part of the analysis as well. Respondents were predominantly women, and while the majority identified as white/Caucasian, others identified as Filipino, Chinese, Iranian, and Croatian. Three participants co-reside with their parents, and the majority live within a reasonable driving distance, if not closer. Five participants lived further away and provided support over the phone, financially, and/or through occasional visits and stays. Participant age was restricted to people in their 20s to mid-40s to capture the perspectives of younger individuals. Eligibility for the study also required participants to be currently employed or employed within the last twelve months, as the study focuses on informal care and particularly how people navigate competing priorities including work. While respondent backgrounds are diverse and varied, many participants have a standard employment relationship—working full-time regular hours for the same employer indefinitely, at the employer’s business locale (Kalleberg, 2000; Vosko, 2010). This means people are taking on care in evenings, and weekends—necessarily part-time, but also that it may disrupt their employment—and that may matter for development of caregiver identity as well as the broad experience of care provision. 91 Additional respondent characteristics are included in Table 1. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Interviews averaged 58 minutes and ranged from 42 to 72 minutes in duration. 4.5.2 Analytical method Transcribed data was coded using NVivo software and using a flexible coding approach (Deterding and Waters 2018). I began with deductive codes based on the interview guide and using Robertson et al’s (2019) operationalization of mental labour. The concept defines mental labour at a high level as thinking done to advance family goals, with six key themes and associated sub themes (refer to Table 4.1). Table 4.1 Coding categories (adapted from Robertson et al., 2019, p.190) Theme Sub Themes Planning and Strategizing Time Management Planning family activities Contingency Plans Monitoring and Anticipating Needs Monitoring family resources and expectations Monitoring children/care recipient Knowing Learning Remembering Managerial Thinking Orchestrating Evaluating Managing task accomplishment Self-regulating Mental preparation Cognitive regulating strategies Choosing what's best for the child/care recipient 92 I reviewed transcripts line by line to code at the sub-theme level, and coded additional themes, such as emotion work, as evident in the data. I then compiled themes into overarching categories and examined how the themes aligned with one another and which codes hung together, similar to a factor analysis approach (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Once the major themes were evident, I contextualized them within the extant research, considering how they support, extend, and challenge current scholarly research and findings. These six key themes and associated sub themes are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Planning and strategizing contingency plans, for example, can easily coincide with the managerial thinking involved in managing task accomplishments. Indeed, Robertson et al explain that these themes, while distinct forms of mental labour, are “often intertwined and co-occuring” (196). Nor are the six key themes and associated sub themes meant to be an exhaustive catalogue of the activities of mental labour. Rather, such a rubric provides researchers with much-need boundaries to and definitions for specific aspects of mental labour, while allowing space and flexibility in the application of such a schema. This balance between specificity and flexibility renders the boundaries between both themes and sub-themes to be porous, which in turn allows Robertson et al to provide “evidence for an existence of a distinct mental labour dimension [of mothering]” (196), and similarly affords a balanced rubric for examining the mental labour components of eldercare provision. 4.6 Findings COVID-19 has been shown to shape eldercare by increasing or decreasing task-based responsibilities (Raile et al., 2021; Truskinovsky et al., 2021), but my analyses of carer experiences suggest that mental labour became a central component of care even as it may have 93 appeared that task frequency decreased. Robertson et al (2019) identify six key components of mental labour: “a) planning and strategizing, b) monitoring and anticipating needs, c) metaparenting, d) knowing, e) managerial thinking, and f) self-regulation” (p.196). The operationalization of the concept offers a comprehensive measure of mental labour that, while developed in the context of household and domestic or reproductive labour, is closely aligned with eldercare provision, particularly throughout an enduring global crisis. 4.6.1 The primacy of mental labour in the COVID-19 pandemic In describing their care activities prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, participants tended to discuss instrumental activities of daily life (IADLs), such as providing transportation, shopping, meals, and housecleaning, as well as emotion work and managerial care, which is consistent with recent studies that examine informal eldercare activities (Duxbury & Higgins, 2017; Patterson & Margolis, 2019). Mental labour, in its various forms, became more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic as people took on additional support-based care because of changes in access to services and systems. As one participant clearly explains, there was a distinct shift in care brought on by the unique nature of living in a pandemic: “So, there’s less outings so there’s less kind of need for driving and all that kinda stuff, there’s not as many doctors’ appointments and stuff like that right now, right? With all that kinda shut, right? But it’s more of being this help of like, they say you should have thirty days of meds just with the pandemic, right? Just in case something were to happen. So, I’m like on it and he’ll be like oh, well I have like five days left, I’ll get it then. I’m like, well no, like you gotta be on top of getting your meds ‘cause sometimes calling your doctor to get a prescription, get it sent in, things take a long time...And having to 94 constantly tell him he can’t go out. You know? Go wash your hands, you know?” (Andrea, Winter 2021) Fewer appointments or reduced need for transportation did not mean less care—instead, it meant more mental labour: remembering medications, appointments, and plans; learning COVID-19 statistics and risk levels; knowing how to navigate the complex and ever-changing regulations and protocols during the pandemic; and knowing (or worse, not knowing) whether ones’ older family members understand and practice safe behaviors. 4.6.2 Thinking work: Planning, managing, and knowing Three aspects of Robertson et al’s (2019) concept stood out as central to eldercare providers as they navigated their shifting care responsibilities: Planning and strategizing, managerial thinking, and knowing. Planning and strategizing Respondents made efforts to plan for their family members who require care in terms of basic needs, such as getting food and medications, as well as trying to plan activities and stave off loneliness due to isolation. Carers seemed particularly conscious of checking in regularly to see if their older family members needed grocery items, and would offer to pick things up in order to reduce the risk of exposure. From a care perspective, this can appear to be a task-based shopping initiative, but as one respondent demonstrates, it is also a form of mental labour: “At Superstore, if we’re there and my mom hasn’t asked us for any food recently, it’s like yeah, better call her up, make sure she’s good…or if we find a sale item at T&T then I’ll let her know and she’ll say yeah, go get me that, because now she’s not willing to go there to get it herself.” (Angela, Fall 2020) 95 Angela is not only planning her own grocery shopping, but is consciously aware of her mother’s needs, and reaches out to identify items she may want. Her care activities are both the task of shopping as well as initiating contact to determine what is needed. Thinking and planning ahead were relevant for carers at they sought to mitigating loneliness while also reducing the risk of exposure to COVID-19. Respondents were thinking about how to ensure that their parents or grandparents were still active and not simply stuck at home. Clara explains how many factors and contingencies are on her mind when she coordinates exercise for her mother: “I'm going for a walk with her to get her out of the house, to make sure that she’s moving, to remember that she has to have her [medical device] before we go, to kind of have a few routes planned, depending on how tired she gets, so that we can turn around when it feels right for her.” (Clara, Spring 2021) The act of going for a walk is only one component of care in this context; much of the care provided is framed around mental labour—ensuring physical exercise happens, remembering necessary medical devices, and planning contingency routes. Other respondents similarly articulated planning activities and outings, or social interaction of some kind, as a central component of their care responsibilities in COVID-19, particularly because of concerns about loneliness and boredom. “I find I’m trying to come up with things so I can take my dad out of the house, like going bike riding, or having him come to the park with us. And just trying to come up with activities I guess to break up their day. And I don't know, I’m doing that because I don’t like hearing, “We’re so bored, we can’t go 96 anywhere, we’re isolated.” Which I feel is not really the case anymore but they’re still kind of choosing to live in that way. So I don't know, I’m trying to entertain them I guess.” (Julie, Summer 2021) Because the pandemic has limited individuals’ ability to engage in regular activities or social events, carers reported that they had to create opportunities for outings and interaction. For some, this can include virtual communication, as Suzanne explains, as a means to limit exposure risks while still offering some entertainment: “I’m so torn between the fact that he needs to see people, he’s really lonely, that’s why I call him so many times; I also send videos of the kids and pictures almost every day. Just try to entertain a little bit. I’m torn between two options, and neither of them are as good. So option A is go see him, so he’s less lonely, but comes with the risk of potentially infecting him; or trying to keep him safe. Like for Christmas, like do I leave him alone on Christmas, alone, alone, alone.” (Suzanne, Fall 2020) Carers are weighing various needs by planning some type of activity or entertainment while simultaneously thinking about the risk of exposure if they visit in person. These considerations highlight not only the planning and strategizing aspects of mental labour, but also the importance of decision making and managerial thinking. Managerial thinking Similar to parents, and mothers in particular (McKeown, 2021; Robertson et al., 2019), many carers articulated their role as the decision makers when it came to exposure risks: “Ultimately I’m the voice of reason. So for Christmas, for instance, if I say it’s fine, he’s gonna come. If I say don’t come, it’s too dangerous, he’s not gonna 97 come. So I’m the one who has to make… I’m the one who’s gonna decide whether he sees his grandchildren for Christmas or not.” (Suzanne, Fall 2020) The responsibility of decision making seemed to feel additionally acute for carers because it was associated with the risk of catching COVID-19. Carers felt compelled to evaluate, with every decision, how much support they could provide and in what manner, which needs they could and could not meet, all the while knowing that the consequences of those decisions could result in negative outcomes. Increased care management and managerial thinking was also evident among participants whose parents were ill or suffering from dementia. Caregiving became more of a challenge with the loss of external support systems (Raile et al., 2021) and the confusion in navigating changing COVID-19 protocols and restrictions. Not only did informal carers feel compelled to take on additional activities that would have previously been completed by formal care providers (Sims-Gould & Martin-Matthews, 2010), they also felt responsible for considering various access restrictions when making care decisions, as Kimberley highlighted in her interview: “The time required just kept going up because you know as time went on of course my father-in-law's condition deteriorated right? So then he just needed more care, and more care, and more care. Then again couldn't get any support because those caregivers were you know, because of the COVID-19 potential, the risk right? And so yeah. I think the part that was probably the most significant impact was the very end. Where you know, to get him into hospice right? Was the only option at the time; And you know, we would have preferred to keep him at home, but if something happened at home then it would have been an immediate trip to the ER. And unfortunately if he was admitted to the hospital ER he wouldn't have been allowed any visitors whatsoever right? 98 Whereas at least when he got to hospice we were able to keep visiting him every day right? And you know with COVID-19 the rules kept changing so it was hard to keep track of like what option was the best.” (Kimberley, Winter 2021) Navigating the healthcare system—its changes and new rules during the pandemic—posed challenges and created more managerial or decision-oriented work, as well as added new tasks to carers’ plates when services were rescinded. Another respondent similarly saw a dramatic increase in her father’s care needs during COVID-19: “With COVID-19 I, in March, realized…so dad had been going to day programs one day a week for about probably three years and we had a hired a caregiver two afternoons a week or something like that. It was still definitely not at all enough help for mom, and then when COVID-19 started happening I was like, mom’s not gonna be able to do this by herself, so I packed up my life, threw it all into storage, and drove home and then lived with them for the last...I guess it was almost like six months. And that was full-on everyday—I was working full-time at the same time as taking care of the house and taking care of mom and dad. And then when I left to come back here, I hired a full-time caregiver, which I am largely paying for, to be there forty hours a week.” (Lisa, Fall 2020) Lisa fundamentally altered her living and working situation to meet the sudden increased care needs, including orchestrating ongoing care and providing ongoing financial support to ensure that her mother can get the help she needs to support her father’s care. In this regard, the COVID-19 pandemic both exacerbated tasks to be completed and increased the mental labour associated with overarching care provision. 99 Knowing Because of risks and consequences associated with COVID-19, carers readily adopted the mental task of knowing (learning and remembering) in order to help ensure that their family members were aware of the pandemic restrictions and protocols in their area as well as practicing proper health measures, such as social distancing, masking, and hand washing. “For me it’s not a big deal like to call him twice a day and just make sure that…I’m not calling hey, are you alive? I’m calling just, you know…the numbers are really bad again in [Location] for the second day, they’re like especially high… So I would call him and, I’m a little sneaky, I say have you seen the numbers, blah blah blah…and so what have you been doing today? Okay… And then I remind him Costco opens between eight and nine for elderly. I do little stuff like that just to make sure that he’s not gonna take unnecessary risk.” (Suzanne, Fall 2020) Suzanne is regularly reaching out to her father to make sure he is aware of the current COVID-19 conditions, as well as to notify him that there are specific accommodations available to him for his protection. From a mental labour perspective, she is paying attention to the statistics around illness prevalence as well as keeping track of priority grocery shopping hours and accessibility information. In other words, she is making sure he has access to the information and resources he needs to be as safe as possible. For some, being able to communicate the reality of the pandemic meant highlighting the importance of knowing and following safety protocols: “My grandpa, for instance, he was like in complete denial that this whole COVID-19 thing was happening and I had to have a really firm talk with him 100 and be like just because there’ve been no alerts coming out doesn’t mean it’s not in the area. We’ve been testing people. I know we’ve been testing people. I participated in testing people and there are people who’ve come up positive, so I really had to be firm with him and he finally kinda came around, but… Yeah.” (Tara, Spring 2020) Not only do carers need to know, think about, plan for and manage COVID-19 conditions and practices themselves, they also feel a need to be able to speak with authority about the risks for their family members who require care. 4.6.3 Crisis management: Managing and anticipating needs, self-regulating, and emotion work Concerns about heightened risk of COVID-19 contraction or illness meant that many carers were regularly monitoring and discussing health practices and protocols with their parents or grandparents. People began to “parent the parent” more—and talked about having ‘firm discussions’ or getting angry with their parents’ or grandparents’ decisions. “Well, you gotta try and tell two old people that they need to stay in their house. They don’t listen, right? So, my dad doesn’t listen, of all people. Doesn’t listen. Likes to go to the grocery shop-, the grocery store daily. Daily. He thinks that’s a fun outing or something. I can’t convince him to stay home.” (Andrea, Spring 2020) Respondents spoke about feeling required to ‘convince’ their family members to take COVID-19 seriously and to practice stringent safety protocols. Carers wrestled with the shifting balance in responsibility and the reality that, despite needing assistance, their parents or grandparents are 101 often still independent and autonomous and can reject advice and recommendations from their children or grandchildren. While carers may attempt to support and create space for autonomy in many cases, the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that respondents felt compelled to intervene in ways they might not otherwise, and bore the stress and guilt of arguing over what they perceived to be in their parents' best interest. As one participant elucidates, for her, this was one of the most difficult aspects of care provision: “The only thing that I really find heavy is to think about what he cannot do and try to explain it to him and convince him. That, I find heavy. Otherwise, it’s… it’s not bad. But the COVID-19 situation and having to sort of explain and translate and, you know, really like insisting that don’t go to the movie theatre and don’t… he used to do stuff that was relatively risky. So stop doing that. Driving people around, he wouldn’t wear a mask and ugh. So that, that was a little heavy, but now that he’s behaving, it’s better.” (Suzanne, Fall 2020) Although respondents actively used parenting-style language, such as referring to older family members who require care as ‘behaving’ or referring to ‘firm’ talks and ‘listening’, several simultaneously spoke about feeling guilty, stressed, and torn by the situation because, ultimately, their goal is to meet their family members’ needs and to share in a familial relationship. While she recognizes her father’s autonomy, one respondent specified that navigating COVID-19 protocols caused significant stress for her when her father was not consistently complying with the safety behaviours she felt were necessary: “And then the other stressor was my dad is stubborn, so he’d go out and go grocery shopping during all this and he’d do other things and he was just kind 102 of ‘I need to get out of the house’. So, that stress of: Dad—you’re high-risk, stay home; and him just needing autonomy and going anyway.” (Rachelle, Fall 2020) Managing and anticipating needs, including monitoring and supervising, is not as simple when older family members have traditionally been in the position of authority relative to the carer and also retain independence and autonomy. Self-regulating also becomes more nuanced, as choosing what is best for another adult is fundamentally different from supporting the best interest of one’s child. Because of the fraught, complicated and interrelated nature of these two facets of mental labour, emotion work seems to act as a necessary mediator. Participants consciously evaluated their communication approaches so as not to violate boundaries of autonomy and independence when trying to support their family members: “I think that helping to navigate changing dynamics takes a lot of emotional energy and mental energy because you’re also trying to think about, okay, how do I think she’s gonna react? What’s the best way to say this? How do I still really be respectful of the fact that like she has agency for her life and for dad’s life, and I trust her to be making good decisions, but at the same time, I also have to recognize that she’s being driven by things that are not necessarily in their best interest, right?” (Lisa, Fall 2020) Eldercare providers themselves highlighted the mental labour and emotion work they were doing to navigate decision making. Not only are they thinking about what they believe is in the best interests of their family members who require care, they are reflecting on the best way to communicate their advice so as not to cause conflict—managing and regulating their emotions as well as those of their parents. Both mental 103 labour and emotion work remain distinct forms of labour, but carers appear to use emotion work in conjunction with mental labour in certain contexts. “I’ve been a lot more direct and honest with my mom to let her know that we’re here and we’ve been, my sister and I in particular, but not pressuring her, but we just really want to get her help, whatever that means. So yeah, it’s definitely stressful. It’s definitely emotionally-challenging…I was talking to a friend one night, we were going for a walk and I think I said in the span of five minutes ten times like I don’t really know what to do. I don’t really know what to do. ‘Cause I don’t really know what to do. And part of it is that I probably could carve a path out, but it’s not about me; it’s about what she’s okay with and about what she’s comfortable with. And of course what I’d be comfortable with is probably different than what she’s comfortable with.” (Bethany, Fall 2020) Navigating issues of independence is difficult in any care relationship, but particularly so in the context of a widespread, deadly, and highly contagious novel virus. Carers are regularly engaging in crisis management, performing mental labour, emotion work and self-regulation to navigate the difficulties inherent in monitoring and anticipating needs in a crisis situation—both during and beyond the pandemic. 4.7 Discussion My study examines younger informal eldercare providers’ experiences of caring during the COVID-19 pandemic, and considers the manifestation of mental labour as it relates to care provision. Using Robertson et al.’s (2019) concept of mental labour, I demonstrate that eldercare providers do indeed engage in this thinking work as part of their care, and that the COVID-19 pandemic particularly highlighted this care responsibility. I find strong alignment with Robertson 104 et al’s (2019) concepts of planning and strategizing, managerial thinking, and knowing, but identify that emotion work also appears to play a role in combination with mental labour as participants balance autonomy, supervision, and assistance—especially in crisis situations. The emerging scholarship on mental labour reflects its centrality as a form of care. The ‘thinking work’ associated with care is not necessarily time or task bound, and remains a fundamentally important aspect of care itself. If we consider transportation to and/or attending medical appointments as care, then the planning required to coordinate schedules, take time off, find a route, remember the medical history, and complete any resulting action items (such as prescription drop off/pick up) are all also inevitably part of that care too. Just as scholars have demonstrated the importance of examining and understanding mental labour (Daminger, 2019; Robertson et al., 2019) or the mental load (Dean et al., 2021; McKeown, 2021) for the household division of labour, parenting, and motherhood, my findings reinforce the relevance of the concept for eldercare providers as well. Individuals do not always name or identify mental labour because of its interconnected association with other forms of household work or care (Daminger, 2019; DeVault, 1987; Offer, 2014), and thus the primacy of task-based measures of care risks missing a substantial form of care provision. Because both this study (and indeed, the few extant current studies on mental labour) indicate that mental labour falls disproportionately on the shoulders of women (Daminger, 2019, 2020; McKeown, 2021; Robertson et al., 2019), the continued omission of the concept risks further entrenching the invisible care burdens that women bear. As such, it is not only important to incorporate mental labour into future studies of eldercare, but also to continue to revisit how we frame care itself. 105 Robertson et al.’s (2019) concept of mental labour offers a useful tool to begin understanding the implications of ‘thinking work’ for informal eldercare providers, particularly in terms of planning, strategizing, managing and knowing. However, the concept as currently operationalized does not directly examine the importance of emotion work in navigating care relationships. Dean et al. (2021) similarly argue, in advocating for the use of the term ‘mental load’ to comprise the complexities of emotion and mental labour, that focusing primarily on the organizing/planning components of care risks missing a key facet of the experiences and implications of engaging in mental labour, and therefore overlooks the impacts to carer health and well-being. My study similarly identifies that carers engage in emotion work in conjunction with mental labour, particularly in terms of positioning and communicating care activities such that older adults who require care feel respected, happy and comfortable (or at least not unhappy with the care they receive). In addition to negotiating family members’ emotions, a standard representation of emotion work (Hochschild, 1983), carers must also contend with their personal emotions, which participants often expressed in terms of guilt, stress, and anxiety. Dean et al. (2021) suggest that societal pressures of ‘good’ or intensive mothering can contribute to the anxiety-related outcomes of mental load for mothers. Similarly, Herron, Funk and Spencer (2019) identify normative expectations of eldercare behaviour that drive people to avoid conflict and minimize argument, creating a sense of pressure to remain positive while also producing feelings of guilt when positivity is insufficient or cannot be maintained. In informal eldercare, the power structures shift as children, who are accustomed to receiving care, begin to provide care for their parents. My findings demonstrate that eldercare providers perform emotion work as a means to navigate the 106 tension of caring for one’s elders, parents, or grandparents. The challenge of negotiating changes in independence requires substantial emotion management and regulation as well as an intricate, ongoing balance of assistance and autonomy. As Funk (2010) explains, eldercare providers feel a sense of responsibility for care and also go to great lengths to preserve parental independence—in part to reduce conflict (a form of emotion work in and of itself). Carers justify transgressing the boundaries of autonomy in crisis situations (Funk 2010), as in the COVID-19 pandemic, and adopt emotion-based strategies to mitigate the conflict that can arise when ‘parenting’ parents. Although, like Dean et al. (2021), I conceive of the mental load as comprising the complexities of emotion work and mental labour, my definition and application of the mental load differs in some ways. I adopt the schema for mental labour that Robertson et al. (2019) present, and I maintain the bounds of emotion work to those original to Hochschild’s (1983) concept. This allows me to distinguish between the mental labour of self-regulating and the emotion work of mood or affect regulation performed to achieve specific outcomes. Where Dean et al. (2021) argue that mental labour and emotional labour are inextricably linked, I find instead that emotion work can also function as a means to facilitate care, and is not necessarily always already present. Emotion work may not be a requirement for every instance of mental labour—sometimes planning is simply that. The partnership of emotion work and mental labour may not always produce additional load. At times, emotion work offers a resource for care providers, acting as a tool that facilitates mental labour and thus alleviates certain stressors related to care provision–– especially relevant where aspects of autonomy and agency are most complex. Studies on emotion work in workplace settings also find that there can be benefits to engaging in emotional labour, 107 including helping to create and sustain positive and collaborative relationships with colleagues and customers (K. Erickson, 2004). Similarly, emotion work in informal care settings can potentially reduce conflict in relationships where agency is transgressed by mental labour. Reduced conflict in care relationships through emotion work could, in turn, potentially reduce the mental load. The outcomes of the present study of informal eldercare in the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that caring often takes the form of ‘crisis management’—crossing the boundaries of parental autonomy becomes both important and necessary to mitigate risk and ensure the adoption of health protocols and protections for family members who require care. Emotion work functions as a strategic tool to facilitate relationship maintenance and to cope with the guilt and stress that arises when we impose our expectations on others. Adopting the concept of mental labour, in addition to exploring the relationship between how thinking and emotion work function alongside one another, is clearly a necessary next step for eldercare research. We can also extend our understanding of the implications of COVID-19 for care, because studies that find reduced care provision during the pandemic may actually simply be reflecting or missing the shift from task-based labour to mental labour. For example, Truskinovsky, Finlay, and Kobayashi (2021) identify that mental health challenges and issues of stress and anxiety increased for care providers whose care responsibilities were heightened during the pandemic, and also for people who saw reduced care requirements. They suggest this may be due to “distress at not being able to support loved ones” (p.13), an interpretation supported by other COVID-19 research (Park, 2021), but we might also see this as an outcome of the transition to increased mental labour and the associated emotional impacts, such as the 108 mental load. Not being able to be physically present to complete a care task does not mean that the task does not get done—instead it means that that care providers must be creative in ensuring that care needs are met, and for many, this requires additional mental labour and emotion work. 4.7.1 Limitations Because my study targeted younger informal eldercare providers, who often provide care for individuals who are in the earlier stages of age-related concerns, the findings may not reflect the experiences of older care providers or those who require full-time care. With a smaller sample and only 5 male participants, gender analyses are also somewhat limited. Additionally, my data were collected in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which limits applicability of the findings as we transition towards a new normal both within and beyond the pandemic. However, the strong alignment with current conceptions of mental labour already applied in the parenting context, and the predominance of mental labour as consistently performed by women (Daminger, 2019; McKeown, 2021), suggests that this is a substantive and highly gendered form of care across multiple contexts. Future research could consider these findings in other contexts or with other groups of eldercare providers, and particularly men, to evaluate whether or not we continue to see similar patterns. Given that the majority of eldercare providers are women (Turcotte, 2013), it is also likely that many are performing mental labour for both their children and parents, simultaneously. If the burden of cognitive responsibility in one context is challenging, experiencing a mental load in multiple contexts will be additionally difficult. Studying the experiences of ‘sandwich generation’ parents and eldercare providers may help to shed more light on the impacts of that dual role. 109 4.8 Conclusion My findings highlight that informal eldercare providers regularly perform mental labour, particularly during the pandemic. Eldercare can also challenge parents’ or grandparents’ autonomy, and in the context of the pandemic carers often felt compelled to transgress agency to minimize what they perceived to be risky behaviours. When doing so, carers relied on emotion work to ease the tensions that arose, particularly when performing certain aspects of mental labour such as monitoring and anticipating needs. Eldercare provision in the COVID-19 pandemic, and the use of emotion work to navigate mental labour and facilitate care provision, reinforces the challenge inherent in balancing independence amidst pressing health measures and new safety protocols. Incorporating mental labour and the mental load into our research on eldercare is essential for fully capturing the experience of eldercare provision. To do so, we must continue to reflect on how we conceptualize and measure care, as well as how emotion work facilitates and shapes the act of caring, especially in crisis situations. 110 Chapter 5. Conclusion “What I got really excited about with your research is that I love to hear about other peoples’ experiences, right? And twice now I’ve been on a plane, one time I was reading a book that was about dementia caregiving, and the person beside me was like, oh, do you have someone in your life? And we started talking and they were actually flying back to [city] after having visited their dad, I think it was. And you know, we talked a lot about like what does it mean to be in this kind of situation? And we kept in touch and I still talk to them every once in a while, on LinkedIn and…there are these aspects of this kind of experience that just...I don’t need a roadmap because I know I’m not gonna get one, but I just wanna know other people…I just wanna hear that other people get it.” (Lisa) Despite the growing prevalence of eldercare provision among young adults, and amidst the myriad emotions that caring encompasses, the experience can feel both lonely and isolating. I came to this work in part because, like Lisa, I wanted to hear and understand the stories of younger adult eldercare providers—to think about what it really means to provide care; what makes someone a caregiver; what it feels like to balance career aspirations with the reality of care responsibilities, and; how care changes in the context of an ongoing global crisis. My dissertation offers a glimpse into the insights and experiences of younger adult eldercare providers. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and conversations, I consider how younger adult carers conceptualize care alongside the motivations and barriers to developing a caregiver identity (adopting the term caregiver to self-describe one’s care responsibilities). Combining interviews with linear probability modeling using the 2018 General Social Survey, Cycle 32 Caregiving and Care Receiving, I analyze carers’ career decision-making and the extent to which 111 younger eldercare providers reduce their hours or turn down promotions to accommodate their care responsibilities. Finally, I explore how carers navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, identifying the mental labour and emotion work evident in managing care relationships through crisis situations. In this concluding chapter, I provide a summary of the key findings of this dissertation. I then highlight my work’s theoretical contributions, and discuss some limitations of my empirical chapters. I close by articulating opportunities for future research. 5.1 Overview of key findings from empirical chapters My empirical chapters respectively consider three interrelated questions: (1) How do younger adult carers understand, conceptualize, and frame care and caregiving; (2) How does eldercare provision shape career development and decision making for younger adult carers; and (3) how have younger carers navigated care provision during the COVID-19 pandemic? 5.1.1 Conceptions of care and caregiving I began my study of the experiences of younger adult eldercare providers by exploring conceptions of care and caregiving. Carers often framed care in relation to need or necessity. Participants were less focused on the specific tasks at hand, but rather on whether older family members needed them to do that task. In this way, the same task in one context might be a form of care, while in another context—one in which the task is not fulfilling a need—it might not be considered care. For some participants, physical care stood out as a definitive care task. 112 How respondents conceptualized care also helped to shape their understanding of the term caregiver, and many were reluctant to identify as caregivers. Three themes stood out as key barriers to caregiver identity adoption, including: • Market-based conceptions of care: Several carers, especially the younger cohorts and those who had worked previously in formal caregiver or medical contexts, negotiated their identity in opposition to market-based care. To these respondents, the term caregiver represented paid or full-time work—a job—and their role as informal carers did not align. • Feelings of familial responsibility: Several female respondents specified that providing care for parents was simply an expected part of family responsibilities. Without explicitly acknowledging the gendered nature of such care expectations, women spoke of their sense that caring for parents is a ‘natural’ and reciprocal part of family life. Although this theme represented a barrier to caregiver identity adoption for women, it was not mentioned by any of the men who participated in the study. • Time investment: Men in the study seemed to find it more difficult to identify as caregivers when they felt they were not spending sufficient time on care tasks. If they were not adjusting their lives around care or committing to full time care provision, they did not feel comfortable calling themselves caregivers. For many participants, self-identifying as a caregiver was fraught. Even when they were clearly providing care, the opaque nature of the term caregiver—and its association with paid work—meant that many carers were unsure of whether or not they ‘count’ as caregivers. This identity liminality, coined by Beatie et al (2021) in reference to the experience of carers for individuals with mild cognitive impairment, is evident among young adult eldercare providers as well, and highlights the complicated and nuanced nature of care provision. 113 5.1.2 Navigating career decisions and responsibilities Regardless of whether or not one identifies as a caregiver, navigating how and when care responsibilities fit into one’s regular schedule poses a central challenge for eldercare providers. The continued relevance of ideal worker norms and gendered organizational structures that rely on employees’ full-time attention to work do not align well with the care responsibilities facing younger adult eldercare providers. Eldercare providers commonly adjust their work hours to accommodate care, and some turn down promotions or opt out of career opportunities, in part due to geographic constraints and the types of care they perform, particularly when care requires physical proximity. Younger carers are as likely as their older counterparts to adjust their work and career paths due to care responsibilities, but the longer-term implications of such care-related career decision making will inevitably differ when made in one’s 20s or 30s as compared to mid-40s and older. Career impacts are especially relevant for women, who are more likely than men overall to indicate they have turned down or chosen not to apply for promotions because of their care responsibilities. In my qualitative interviews, men expressed more facility with fitting care into their schedules, whereas women spoke more openly about adjusting their career to accommodate care. For some, this is evident in career choice from the very outset, with several respondents explaining that they opted into casual or seasonal work explicitly because of the increased access to the hours they needed to manage their care requirements. The multi-methods nature of my study provides additional insight into how carers navigate work and care, but the cross-sectional nature of the data limits analysis of the impacts over the life 114 course. Still, the results highlight that younger adult carers regularly adjust their work and career due to care, and the implications of those decisions offer important insight for future analyses. 5.1.3 Salience of mental labour in eldercare Mental labour (also referred to as cognitive labour) includes the planning, strategizing, and coordinating activities of household and reproductive duties. The concept’s use in sociology remains nascent and has to date been applied in family care contexts specifically focused around parenting, childcare, and domestic and household duties. In exploring the experiences of younger adult eldercare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic, I find that carers relied on various facets of mental labour to navigate the unprecedented crisis. With services shuttered and seniors at particular risk for serious infection, carers were required to not only ensure that their parents and grandparents had the tools and care they needed, but also that they fully understood the nature of the pandemic, how best to limit their risk, and what the various (and regularly changing) health protections were at any given time. Younger adult eldercare providers engaged in planning and strategizing, knowing, and monitoring and anticipating needs—specific forms of mental labour as outlined by Robertson et al. (2019). In order to facilitate the increased transgressions of autonomy between themselves and their parents and grandparents, carers relied on emotion work to ease conflict and bring their family members onside. Some referred to this shift as ‘parenting’ their parents, or spoke about the ways in which they felt they had to convince and cajole their older family members into complying with important health protections. 115 In this way, the COVID-19 pandemic did not reduce care responsibilities for younger adult eldercare providers, even if some carers were engaging in fewer discrete tasks or spending less time on direct care with their parents or grandparents, but instead shifted care to incorporate an increased use of mental labour and, in turn, emotion work. 5.2 Contribution of findings I set out to understand the experiences of younger adult eldercare providers, specifically by analyzing how they understand and conceptualize care, how they come to identify as caregivers (and why they may not), as well as how they navigate work and care, and how they manage care throughout an unprecedented global pandemic. From an overarching perspective, my findings tell a story of love, laughter, frustration, grief, loss, and negotiation. If the reader comes away from this dissertation with one main message, it should be that we must think a little differently about what it means to provide eldercare. Younger adult eldercarers may not think about care as time or task based; they may not identify as caregivers; the impacts of their care-related career decisions may not be fully reflected in cross-sectional survey data; and they are undoubtedly performing mental labour, often in conjunction with emotion work. 5.2.1 Theoretical contributions My findings engage with and can help to extend theoretical approaches to care research. By examining conceptions of care among younger adult eldercare providers, my findings shed light on the meaning and measurement of care. Rather than task or time based, my respondents conceptualized care as needs-based, which allows for the same task to count as care in one context, but not necessarily in another. The experiences of younger adult caregivers help to push 116 the boundaries of what we consider care, and as well as how it manifests and functions, particularly in earlier stages of care provision. I also extend the scholarly understanding of caregiver identity theories (Montgomery & Kosloski, 2009; O’Connor, 2007) by incorporating barriers to identity development. In particular, the interplay between formal and informal care, alongside shared terminology and market-based conceptions of care, results in opaque terminology that carers struggle to contend with. My study reinforces the relevance of identity liminality, especially in early stages of informal care. In doing so, I bring a sociological lens to the theory, and offer a new site of exploration for future sociological research—to what extent do structures of formal care, alongside market-based conceptions of caregiving—shape carers’ access to a caregiver identity and related support services? In investigating the care-related career impacts and decision making among younger adult eldercare providers, my study reinforces the sustained reality of ideal worker norms. I find that carers remain tasked with prioritizing career or care, in large part because of the structure of ‘all or nothing’ workplace norms. Younger adult carers’ experiences of navigating care and work reinforce that the boundaries around time expectations of work remain firm. Also, the study highlights the gendered nature of the career impacts of care by demonstrating that women are more likely than men to shape their career and career-related decisions around care responsibilities and obligations, often prioritizing the latter at the expense of the former. My findings also expand the applicability of the sociological concept of mental labour by elucidating its effects in informal eldercare provision. Mental labour functions slightly differently for eldercare compared to domestic and reproductive labour, with special reliance on 117 knowing, planning and strategizing, and managing and anticipating needs. By analyzing the manifestation of mental labour in the contest of eldercare, my findings help to expand the concept and identify the interplay of mental labour and emotion work when navigating autonomy in care relationships. As a whole, my dissertation reinforces the importance of including younger adult eldercare providers in scholarly research on care, because their experiences offer unique insights that can help to frame and reframe our broader understanding of informal eldercare. 5.2.2 Contributions to public policy and resource development My study offers two central considerations for public policy and resources designed to support carers. First and foremost, many younger adult carers do not identify as caregivers, and even among those who might, the emergence of identity liminality leaves some unsure as to whether or not they qualify as caregivers who could access formal supports. Where policy makers are designing services for eldercare providers, it is essential to focus on the variety and reality of care rather than solely speaking to people already identifying as caregivers. This may be especially important for younger adult carers, who are taking on the role of eldercare at a time that is outside the historical life course norms. Revisiting the framing of care and the terminology of support services could help ensure that those who need support can access it more easily. Secondly, the salience of mental labour, and the reliance on emotion work, represent important outcomes of my study for inclusion in policy and resource development. Although previous research on mental labour has predominantly focused on domestic and household divisions of labour and care, there is evidence that it can create an additional care burden. My findings highlight that mental labour can be stressful, particularly when navigating autonomy in care 118 relationships. Developing policy supports for carers and explicitly acknowledging and discussing this form of care, as well as providing guidance for how to effectively manage and navigate fraught relationships, could be very beneficial for younger adult carers. 5.3 Implications of research The results of my dissertation provide several overarching implications for scholars of informal eldercare. First, the centrality of the language used in research contexts can shape both what counts as care as well as who counts as a care provider (or caregiver, if that term is used). Younger adult eldercare providers framed care in relation to older family members’ needs, rather than conceptualizing care as task-based. The implications of this semantic distinction—care as situational versus care as a task or activity—means that how scholars frame care in all aspects of research, from data collection to data analysis, will shape who participates and how care is understood. Broadening our definitions of care, carer, and caregiver will help to ensure that our research is as nuanced and inclusive as possible, helping to better reflect the varied stories and experiences of all care providers. In conjunction with expanding conceptions of care, my findings elucidate the importance of the cognitive aspects of care, such as mental labour, for eldercare providers. Scholars investigating informal eldercare should reflect in the ways in which mental labour manifests for eldercare. My dissertation demonstrates that not only are eldercare providers engaging in mental labour, but that they do so in ways that are similar to and different from mental labour in domestic, reproductive, and household duties. Not only should scholars investigate these dynamics further in future research, they should also re-evaluate how care is measured to ensure that the cognitive dimensions of eldercare are fully reflected in any work on informal care. 119 My study also highlights the complicated nature of autonomy in family care. When investigating eldercare, it may be helpful for scholars to reflect on the role that agency and autonomy play in care, particularly when children are caring for parents. This shifting dynamic can cause friction and increased stress, resulting in the need for emotion work to facilitate and sustain a positive relationship between the carer and their older family members. 5.4 Limitations of research While qualitative research is not designed to prioritize generalizability, my study sample is relatively small, having only conducted 29 interviews with 21 carers. Because my study was focused on younger adult carers, my findings may not be applicable to older or younger carers. Additionally, the study could have benefitted from more carers in their 20s to better reflect the younger adult experiences. However, the preponderance of small qualitative studies in this area both suggests and, effectively, demonstrates that these individuals are a harder to reach population (D’Amen, Socci and Santini, 2021). The qualitative sample for this study was also quite homogenous in ethnic and racial background, with a majority of respondents identifying as White. Although some ethnic and racial outcomes were evident even with a smaller sample, including substantive analysis on these topics was limited by the data itself. Similarly, the gender breakdown of the study is (not unexpectedly) disproportionately female, and while gendered perspectives and differences in approaches to care are evident in the findings, these demographic factors could be explored further in future research to tease out additional nuances and potentially examine the generalizability of key results. For example, more in-depth investigation of conceptions of care and caregiving across cultural contexts would be interesting, especially where gender and race or 120 ethnicity intersect. Additionally, more insight into the gendered nature of mental labour among eldercare providers would continue to frame and flesh out the nascent concept. Another important sample consideration is that the vast majority of respondents held jobs that would be considered as standard employment relationships—working full-time for the same employer on a perpetual basis—meaning that considerations of balancing work and care are framed predominantly in that context. Studies have demonstrated that service or shift work, especially work that is irregularly scheduled or where the employee is at the employers’ behest for just-in-time scheduling (Luhr, 2020), can exacerbate work and care conflict in ways that would not be fully reflected in my study. Conducting the study throughout the COVID-19 pandemic also posed certain challenges, and may limit the extent to which these findings are sustained in the as-yet-unknown new ‘normal’ for care provision. While the study timing afforded the ability to capture implications of the COVID-19 pandemic in real time, it remains to be seen which of these care experiences will be sustained in the longer term. Another complication of the COVID-19 pandemic is the requirement to conduct interviews virtually. This workaround was beneficial in that it helped to widen my access to many individuals I would not otherwise have been able to interview, but it also meant that people without reliable access to phone and internet would be less likely to participate. 5.5 Avenues for future research Future research can help to address some of the limitations identified here by better reflecting the voices of racialized younger adult carers as well as incorporating more young men who provide 121 eldercare. Investigating the extent to which the central themes of this study remain evident across intersectional identities would also provide helpful extensions of this study. Examining the findings of this study in the context of the care environment as COVID-19 protections have been reduced and eliminated may also be useful. To what extent do the findings remain evident as protections and restrictions are removed? While the access to services may have increased, the risk of illness has also dramatically increased, and seniors are particularly vulnerable. Understanding how carers navigate their care responsibilities and balance infection risk—particularly among individuals who may have a different perception of acceptable risk levels—remains an important consideration. My findings align with previous research that highlights the difficulty in adopting a caregiver identity. A central problem with not calling oneself a caregiver is that one is then less likely to make use of services designed to support caregivers. While my dissertation encourages support providers to revisit their terminology use, scholars may also want to more closely examine the use of such services and explore specific barriers to access facing younger adult carers in particular. In other words, are there unique aspects of younger adult carers’ experiences or responsibilities that may dissuade them from using support services? Another interesting avenue for future research to consider is the relationship between younger adult carers and their older family members requiring care. More insight into how carers navigate and manage agency across various stages of care can highlight the nuances and changing dynamics of care. For example, how does agency manifest in the early stages of informal care versus when individuals require ongoing or have more intensive care needs? 122 Because my study highlights the importance of path dependent career decision making with respect to eldercare, another consideration for future research may be to incorporate eldercare into longitudinal studies of career and care outcomes. Aligning these studies with open-ended questions and/or qualitative interviews can offer additional insight into how carers think about, manage, and balance their career and care responsibilities. My findings also identified mental labour as a salient consideration for eldercare providers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Addressing how this form of labour functions across various demographic and age cohorts of eldercarers may offer useful insights for further theory development as well as refine the use of the concept in eldercare generally. 5.6 Closing Statement As with any study, the stories shared in this dissertation are a small portion of the vast and complex experiences my participants so generously shared with me. I wish I could gift you, dear reader, with the laughter (like when Clara spoke with joy about taking her mother on walks), the tears (when Eric talked about sharing a joint bank account with his father to save up for funeral costs that they would otherwise be unable to cover), the guilt (when Julie discussed her fraught relationship with her mother, and how she struggles to express her frustration and ends up angry), the hope (when Bethany calls to talk to her father, even as he slowly loses his ability to communicate), and all the other myriad emotions, actions, and experiences that make up younger adult eldercare. Instead, I leave you with the heartfelt message that whatever form it takes, eldercare matters. As scholars, we must continue to support carers and care research, and work to find ways to reflect the beautiful and difficult challenge that represents. 123 References Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. 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Social Forces, 1–28. 140 Appendices Appendix A The following table outlines the sample characteristics and demographic information for semi-structured interview participants. Sample Characteristics Pseudonym Age Gender Care recipient Race/Ethnicity Occupational Field Education Interview Timing 2nd Interview Alexandra 37 F Grandparents White Trades/Tech High School Nov-20 Alexia 39 F Parents White Management/Professional College/Trades Nov-19 Nov-20 Allison 40 F Parents Filipino Office/Clerical Bachelor's degree Jan-20 Oct-20 Andrea 37 F Parents White Healthcare College/Trades Apr-20 May-21 Angela 44 F Parents Chinese Office/Clerical College/Trades Oct-20 Bethany 40 F Parents White Management/Professional Graduate Degree Jan-20 Oct-20 Brandon 44 M Parents; In-Laws White Trades/Tech College/Trades Aug-20 Clara 35 F Parents White Office/Clerical Graduate Degree May-21 Eric 43 M Parents White Trades/Tech High School Mar-20 Gabriella 40 F Parents Croatian Office/Clerical Bachelor's degree Jan-20 James 47 M Parents White Management/Professional College/Trades Feb-20 Joshua 42 M Parents White Management/Professional Bachelor's degree Jan-20 Julie 38 F Parents White Unemployed College/Trades Apr-20 Aug-21 Kimberley 36 F Parents; In-Laws Filipino Office/Clerical Bachelor's degree Jan-20 Jan-21 Lisa 40 F Parents White Management/Professional Graduate Degree Nov-20 Negar 33 F Parents Iranian Management/Professional Graduate Degree Dec-19 Phillip 44 M Parents White Management/Professional Graduate Degree Jan-21 Rachelle 25 F Parents White Office/Clerical Bachelor's degree Jan-20 Oct-20 Samantha 40 F In-Laws White Healthcare Graduate Degree Oct-20 Jan-21 Suzanne 42 F Parents White Management/Professional Graduate Degree Nov-20 Tara 23 F Grandparents White Healthcare Bachelor's degree Apr-20
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Sociology
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Graduate
Fuller, Sylvia
Care conundrum : experiences of younger adult eldercare providers
Text