Abstract
<p><span>The primary aim of this article is to make a contribution to clarify the concept of “care” in the field of care for older people, by reviewing and discussing the conceptual literature and, based on this, by proposing a new unified definition. The secondary aim of this article is to trace, in general terms, the evolution of the empirical research on care for older people, presenting at the same time, possible avenues for future research. It is expected that a new unified definition of the concept of care may contribute to a better operationalization of it, enhancing the reliability and validity of future research and the potential for comparative analysis and theory development.</span></p>
Highlights
Providing and receiving care are central components of social life, as they accompany us over our entire life courses (Barnes, 2012)
Care is nowadays a “burning policy issue in almost every society” (Kröger, 2009: 399), including care for older people due to the challenges raised by the ageing of the population, especially the fear that we may have to face a “caring deficit”, i.e., an insufficient number of caregivers to meet the needs of a growing number of dependent older people (Tronto, 2013)
It is not easy to separate the discussion of the conceptual literature from the discussion of the empirical literature, it was decided to establish a secondary aim for this article, namely to trace, in general terms, the evolution of the empirical research on care for older people, identifying at the same time possible avenues for future research
Summary
Providing and receiving care are central components of social life, as they accompany us over our entire life courses (Barnes, 2012). Some definitions emphasize the emotional nature of care, circumscribe it to the private/domestic sphere and conceive it as a non-waged work. Other definitions emphasize the practical nature of care, establish that care practices can occur both in the private/domestic sphere and in the public sphere, and conceive care as non-waged work and as waged work. This diversity of definitions of care, and the associated operationalisations, produces inevitably a significant divergence in terms of results/findings, making it difficult to make comparisons between studies and compromising the potential for theory development.
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