Caregiving and being cared for is one of the critical aspects of kinship and family life. All of us have been parented in one form or another. In addition, many provide caregiving and nurturance to children, younger adults, and other adults who need or desire assistance (figures 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3).

Perhaps the most emphasized caregiving role in the United States is that of “parent,” but it is important to realize that this too is a social construction. Some are parents via biological creation, but others become parents via other familial relationships such as grandparenting. There are legally assigned adoptive and foster parents. And there are those who fully meet the caregiving and provider definition of parent, but have neither legal nor biological ties.

In this section we will discuss parenting, grandparenting and other nurturing relationships. We will examine the horizontal and the vertical relationships related to kinship and caregiving.

Figures 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3. Nurturing relationships occur in many family forms.

A caregiver provides nurturance or support of another person in some way, shape or form. Other than parenting, caregiving also covers areas regarding the care of adults, elders, individuals who are disabled or ill, and people who fall anywhere in the spectrum of not being able to have their full needs met without the assistance of others.

Now that the baseline meaning of a caregiver is defined, let’s explore the different, deeper aspects of nurturance and how people may or may not get the proper care that they need. We will examine the ways in which institutional power, influence, and discrimination impact these critical relationships. We will discuss important theories related to parenting and other nurturing relationships. And we will continue to note the ways that societal perceptions impact families—the ways that some kinship groups are harmed or limited and others are privileged—in their experience with nurturance, caregiving, and receiving care.

As introduced in Chapter 1, one way to view families is through their private and public functions. In this chapter, the focus is on the public function of families: the caregiving and nurturing of family members, with a focus on children. Other public functions include caring for disabled adults and older family members (Cherlin, n.d.).

Another example of this function are older family members caring for grandchildren, or helping run households for and with their adult children. The relationships can also be bi-directional when multigenerational households share caregiving, financial, and household responsibilities, as pictured in Figure 4.4. These kinds of households have consistently been more common in other countries and within some cultures in the United States, such as the Latinx communities. They are now becoming more common among the White middle-class demographic that previously embraced the nuclear family. Demographic and societal forces that have contributed to these changes in needs and preferences.

Figure 4.4. Multigenerational family living situations are more common in the early 2000’s than they were in the late 20th century.

4.2.2 References

Cherlin, Andrew.Public and Private Families: An Introduction – McGraw Hill., 2017.https://www.mheducation.com/highered/product/public-private-families-introduction-cherlin/M9781260813272.html