Values and the experience of family care-giving: cultural values or shared family values?

The Sociocultural Stress and Coping Model focuses on the role of cultural values in shaping the stress and coping process for family care-givers of frail older adults. The literature suggested ethnic group-specific values as influences. The current study explored care-givers' perceptions of values influencing caring to identify values not addressed in quantitative studies of cross-cultural care-giving. Seventeen family care-givers from Australian Aboriginal, Romanian-Australian, Pacific Island and white non-immigrant Australian backgrounds participated in semi-structured interviews about their care-giving experience and the role that values played in caring for a frail older adult. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts led to identification of themes of cultural values of familism and care for frail older adults, religious values of filial piety and religious coping, love, reciprocity and responsibility/obligation. While cultural values influenced family care versus institutional care, religion was a more clearly identified source of values. Care-givers mostly shared values of love, reciprocity and responsibility/obligation rather than endorsing culture-specific values, with potential variations in expression between individualist and collectivist cultures. These findings suggest that the focus on cross-cultural differences may have missed core values shared across cultural groups and underestimated the influence of religion on care-giving values. Future research could focus on these perceptions of care-givers themselves rather than external perceptions of researchers and service providers.