Dependency as Status: Older Adults’ Presentations of Self as Recipients of Care

Virpi Timonen,Luciana Lolich

doi:10.1177/2158244020963590

Abstract

We draw on Bourdieu’s and Goffman’s theories to elaborate the novel idea of dependency as status in old age, a concept that emerged from our Grounded Theory study conducted with 46 older adults (26 women and 20 men) living in and around Dublin, Ireland. The research participants’ portrayals of (in)dependence and assistance reflected their access to and use of social and symbolic (age) capital. Older adults derived social capital from supportive family relations or trusting relationships with formal care providers, and deployed such capital to signal their status as “cared for” individuals. Age capital—constructions of deservingness drawing on advanced age, age-related disabilities, and lifelong contributions—was used by older adults to frame and justify acceptance of help. We argue that where older adults are able to draw on age capital or social capital, they can signal their position as “cared for” individuals who display and acknowledge their dependency, and transform it into a marker of status. Conversely, some participants were keen to present themselves as independent. These participants made downward comparisons with others whom they saw as “worse off” or, in their view, as insufficiently responsible for their own health and well-being. In the contemporary Western frame, dependency is to be avoided at all costs, but we argue that some older people are able to embrace dependency in a way that reflects and demonstrates their status and agency. Care professionals and members of informal networks can make a significant difference to older persons’ acceptance of help, care, and support by offering services in a manner that affirms the care recipients’ worth and agency.

Highlights

Understandings of dependence and independence vary between different cultural contexts, disciplinary traditions, and welfare states (Baltes, 1996; Fraser & Gordon, 1994; Plath, 2009)
Policy documents and care professionals in the Western context tend to emphasize the importance of independence which is construed as the opposite of dependence (Plath, 2009), but we know that older adults’ perceptions of independence and dependence are more complex and often not binary (Gignac et al, 2000; Hammarström & Torres, 2010)
When we examined the data from the sub-sample of 46 older adults, we detected distinctive talk around understandings of independence and dependence, and how these were presented to the group

Summary

Introduction

Understandings of dependence and independence vary between different cultural contexts, disciplinary traditions, and welfare states (Baltes, 1996; Fraser & Gordon, 1994; Plath, 2009). In medical and nursing contexts, dependency is generally understood as an outcome of a temporary or chronic functional disability where an individual is unable to perform a task that they could previously perform alone. In this definition, dependence refers to an objective status that can be instrumentally assessed as an individual attribute (Ball et al, 2004; Ory et al, 1998). Research conducted with home support service users in Australia revealed predominantly individualist understandings of independence that cantered

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion