Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research 2021, 22 (2): 87-109 | DOI: 10.13060/gav.2021.021

Meanders of Care: When Men Take Care of Women with Dementia at Home

Dita Jahodová

Fakulta humanitních studií, Univerzita Karlova

In the Czech Republic, it is women who are usually the primary carers of elderly family members, while men tend to be less involved and perform more concrete, visible care tasks. In this article I focus on the cases of men acting as the primary carer for a wife with dementia at home in cooperation with respite services. The data are drawn from an analysis of participant observations in the carers' households and from an analysis of semi-structured interviews with the men acting as primary carers and with respite services workers. This article shows the repertoires of care that have been used by men as caregivers and points out the limitations attached to distinguishing and categorising care as 'female' and 'male'. It investigates gendered aspects of long-term caring at home and shows how men in the role of primary carers deal with the challenging situations that they face while providing everyday care at home.

Keywords: men as caregivers, gender, home care, care of women with dementia

Received: September 21, 2020; Revised: November 20, 2021; Accepted: December 1, 2021; Published: January 18, 2022  Show citation