How Does Caregiving Affect Family Relationships?

How does caregiving affect family relationships? Becoming a caregiver can upend life. So if you are an adult caring for aging loved ones, a married couple caring for aging parents, or a spouse caring for a spouse, learn how care responsibilities change through the years.

Let’s look at three scenarios to gain insights into ways caregiving affects family relationships. What happens when:

1 The help provided moves past the early stages when a husband or wife, adult child, or grandchild helps out a little bit here and there—and they don’t recognize their participation as caregiving until someone in a healthcare profession calls them a caregiver.

2 Adult children who experienced childhood trauma like a verbally abusive parent, witnessed domestic violence, grew up in a family with mental health or substance use disorders, or a parent who was incarcerated and later released—is expected by the abusing parent to provide care?

3 Caregivers are expected to take on complicated hands-on or interpersonal care tasks, commit more time, and trade priorities to care for another person.

Keep reading this article on Pamela D. Wilson.