ABSTRACT

The all-consuming role and responsibilities of providing care to an aging parent or spouse create identity disruption and stress. However, this stress may be resolved as family caregivers integrate the role of caregiver into their identity and construct an aspect of their identity around providing care (i.e., caregiver identity). Rooted in the retrospective heuristic of communicated narrative sense-making theory (CNSM), this paper investigates the identities family caregivers construct through online narratives about their caregiving experiences. Using thematic narrative analysis to analyze a corpus of 40 online narratives, this study yielded four distinct caregiver identities: the prisoner, which is defined by a sense of being trapped by the responsibility of caregiving; the crumbling caregiver, which focuses on extreme exhaustion in providing care; the companionate caregiver, which focuses on the relational aspects of providing care; and the redeemed caregiver, which is defined by growth through difficulty.

摘要

为年迈的父母或配偶提供照顾的无所不在的角色和责任造成了身份认同和压力。然而，当家庭照顾者将照顾者的角色融入他们的身份并围绕提供照顾（即照顾者身份）构建他们身份的一个方面时，这种压力可能会得到解决。本文植根于交流叙事意义建构理论 (CNSM) 的回顾性启发式方法，研究了家庭照顾者通过在线叙述他们的照顾经历而构建的身份。本研究使用主题叙事分析对 40 个在线叙事语料库进行分析，得出四种不同的照顾者身份：囚犯，其定义为被照顾责任困住的感觉；摇摇欲坠的照顾者，侧重于提供护理时极度疲惫；陪伴照顾者，专注于提供照顾的相关方面；以及被救赎的照顾者，这是通过困难的成长来定义的。