Social attitudes

For patients, the social and emotional repercussions of stroke include shame, personality changes, and upheavals experienced by the couple (i.e. patient and main family caregiver). These impacts on the couple ‘patient/family caregiver’ are scarcely documented. Focusing on the perceptions of the patients and the family caregivers living at home, two years after a stroke occurrence, the aims of the study were to analyse the concordance of attitudes towards the emotional and social repercussions of stroke and to determine the profiles of the differing dyads.

We investigate the extent to which people's earlier circumstances and experiences shape subsequent life-courses. We do this using UK longitudinal data to provide a dynamic analysis of employment and caregiving histories for 4339 people over 15–20 years between 1991 and 2010. We analyse these histories as sequences using optimal matching and cluster analysis to identify five distinct employment-caregiving pathways. Regression analysis shows that prior to embarking on these pathways, people are already differentiated by life-stage, gender and attitudes towards family and gender roles.

A common theme in the literature on care-giving is the issue of ‘hidden’ carers, that is, people who undertake caring roles and responsibilities, yet do not identify themselves as carers. One reason people do not recognise themselves as carers relates to the nature of the caring relationship. When providing care for a family member, intra-familial bonds of love and reciprocity do not encourage parties to view the relationship as anything other than a ‘normal’ familial relationship.