Home Sweet Hospital: The Nature and Limits of Family Responsibilities for Home Health Care

Abstract

“Responsibility” for the care of one’s family members is, according to these selected quotations, an opportunity that families need (and presumably lack), a task traditionally assigned to women, a personally costly obligation, a loving act, a total commitment. Responsibility is, variously, something to cherish, something to resent, something that is thrust upon one, or something that one tries to thrust upon others.

As the eldest of five living children, I took responsibility because the others wouldnt. It was a decision which cost me my health, my job and more than likely, my marriage.

Family caregiver, Georgia (1993)

She is my mother; she is my responsibility; she is my blessing.

Family caregiver, Georgia (1993)

Families need the opportunity to take responsibility for themselves.

Vice-President Albert Gore, at conference “Family Reunion II: Reinventing Family Policy,” Nashville, TN (1994)

A primary assumption that runs through this history [of long-term care] is that families, a euphemism for wives and daughters, would take primary responsibility for their disabled or impoverished elders.

Martha Holstein and Thomas Cole (1995)

Most home health care agencies require there to be a ‘responsible person’ who can step in and personally provide or arrange for coverage if the aide is ill, detained...or irresponsible....The responsibility of the involved family member is nearly pervasive.

Nancy N. Dubler (1990)