"Choice" in Filial Care Work: Moving Beyond a Dichotomy (Essay‪)‬

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OUR history, it is estimated that Canadian adults will spend more time caring for their aging parents than raising their children (McDaniel 2005). According to recent findings from the General Social Survey on social support, just over 10 percent of the population aged 45 to 64 years are providing filial care to older parents (Stobert and Cranswick 2004). In this paper, filial care work is used to describe assistance and support provided by adult children for their adoptive, birth, or step-parents (i.e., it encompasses informal or family caregiving rather than formal or paid work). Research shows that the majority of care for older adults has always come from family sources, and with the shift away from institutionalization in the 1980s, the probability of providing such care continues to increase (Marks 1996). Yet depending on the context in which care work for parents is performed, a caregiver's well-being, particularly his/her mental health, can be seriously compromised (Anderson et al. 1995; Cochrane et al. 1997; Lee 1999). As such, there has been keen interest in the factors that motivate and sustain adult children's caregiving behaviors and frame their subjective experiences.