Tensions Related to the Transition of Elderly Care from an Unpaid to a Paid Activity

Abstract

The family has always been a major source of care for frail, elderly individuals, and women have traditionally held the primary responsibility for providing care within the family framework. Long-term care has thus been an informal, unpaid task carried out by daughters, daughters-in-law or other family members. Family structures have shifted dramatically in recent decades, however, and women have increasingly participated in the labour force; that is, women have assumed a new role as wage earners along with the emergence of new family forms. These changes have increased the demand for alternative forms of care, and most industrial societies have restructured their elderly care policies.