Life Course Pathways Into Intergenerational Caregiving

OBJECTIVES: We develop a framework for the analysis of pathways into intergenerational caregiving to older people provided by family members using life course concepts of key turning events in life, cumulative processes, and linked lives within the family realm. METHODS: Using framework analysis, we analyze semistructured qualitative interviews from a sample of dyads (older cared-for adults and their main family carers comprised of children, children-in-law, and grandchildren) in Austria (N = 24) and Slovenia (N = 52). Data were collected in 2019 through purposive sampling, including dyads from a differentiated socioeconomic background and gender. RESULTS: The analysis reveals 4 nonexclusive pathways into caregiving. One pathway is associated with single turning events occurring in family or work trajectories of carers that expanded the possibilities for caregiving later in life. A second pathway referred to cumulative processes that later influenced transitions into caregiving, such as personal biographies marked by weak labor market attachment. Another cumulative pathway, exclusive to caregiving, is characterized by continued and sustained exchanges of support within families that cement reciprocal ties that underpin caregiving at later stages. In the fourth pathway, life trajectories of siblings, but also family relationships and conflicts, constrained carers into their role. DISCUSSION: Decisions regarding caregiving within families can be best understood as processes, linked to developments in other trajectories in carers’ lives, as much as to internal family dynamics and relationships. Becoming a carer may be itself the result of intertwined accumulated vulnerabilities, as well as cumulative exchanges within families.