When nursing the elderly doesn't end at work: caregivers' narratives in the paid and unpaid spheres

Abstract

Caregiving to the elderly in both the paid and unpaid spheres involves a crucial component, emotion management, that is often invisible despite its importance to the delivery of care. As well, little is known about how caregivers’ emotion management in one setting is related to its expression in another. This thesis is an exploration to gain a greater understanding of the ways in which the contexts of caregiving shape the emotion management involved, in hopes of contributing to the knowledge of an important dimension of caregiving and women’s work in the two spheres.

Based on the narratives of women who work as caregivers in both the paid and unpaid spheres simultaneously, I use a socialist-feminist perspective to analyze the ideology and structure that shape contexts in which emotion management occurs in caregiving. I explore how these contexts affect the experience of emotion management, and how the contexts might impact one another and the emotion management performed in each.