‘Mom Always Liked You Best’
Posted in Miscellany, Relationships on 11/04/2009 12:16 pm by JimIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
The notion that parents cherish all their children equally — or at least say they do — is so entrenched in our culture that colleagues warned Karl Pillemer, a gerontologist at Cornell University embarking on the first of many studies of family favoritism, that his research would prove futile. No mother, they insisted, would admit to caring more for one son or daughter than another.
So much for that. His team’s interviewers, talking to mothers ages 65 to 75 in the Boston area about their adult offspring, found that most were perfectly willing to name favorites. “Most mothers have very distinct preferences,” Dr. Pillemer said. “There’s one to whom they feel most emotionally close . . .
Sphere: Related Content
How an elderly loved one is treated and cared for is a main concern of relatives and health care professionals around the globe. In Lessons from a Caregiver, Laurel Wicks shows how focusing on the older person’s comfort, happiness, and serenity is not only good for the elder but also a less stressful way for the caregiver to manage the elder’s care. 
The intricacies of elder care-giving duties and responsibilities can be overwhelming, especially because adult children of aging parents do not know the ins and outs of the medical and social service systems, let alone how to cope with the emotional burdens of providing care for their ailing parents. They desperately wish for a single resource that answers their questions with “how to” information that restores their feelings of competence and control. “Eldercare 911″ is that resource. With the steady growth of the elderly population, it is estimated that approximately one-third of Americans will be providing care for an elderly person in the near future. This well-researched, compassionate, and comprehensive handbook will empower caregivers to be the best they can be without neglecting their own very legitimate needs. The authors use excerpts from a compilation of caregiver interviews to demonstrate the most common problems in eldercare. The book is organised into easily accessible sections and subsections: 20 chapters divided into 131 topics and then into another 77 subtopics, making it simple for readers to find exactly what they are looking for. The authors give full consideration to the time limitations and career needs of working caregivers, and the special challenges faced by women with teenage children, spouses, or significant others who may not always be sensitive to the caregiver’s balancing act. Among the topics discussed are knowing when elderly people need help; how to intervene; finding and using support systems; handling burnout; managing medical, insurance, and benefits issues; overseeing medications; coping with Alzheimer’s Disease and other serious illnesses; how to decide when hospitalisation is necessary; detecting and dealing with abuse; working with eldercare professionals; setting up home care; and making decisions and arrangements for alternate housing. The authors also examine rarely discussed, sensitive issues that affect family communication and relationships like parent’s sexual behaviour, dating and remarriage, and death and dying.
A specialist in elder care, Dr. Muriel Gillick examines the complications of lives lived far longer than ever before. This book aims to help the frail elderly and their families cope with the often unforeseen dilemmas of aging: the most common chronic ailments, the acute problems, and their impact on living options. Tracing the stories of four people, Dr. Gillick highlights the various challenges and decisions that arise when frailty develops and discusses the importance of prevention and social responsibility in assessing, treating, and living with frailty. 
Planning, providing, and evaluating geriatric care raises a wide variety of legal issues for health and human services practitioners and those who advocate for, develop, and enforce the public policies within which services are delivered. This text offers excerpts from selected statutes and regulations, judicial opinions, and the legal and health care journal literature, as well as commentary on these materials, discussion questions and hypothetical cases, and suggestions of other information sources for the teacher and student. Ideal for courses or programs in health administration, nursing, law, ethics, social work, or gerontology, this text will stimulate class reflection and interaction regarding the meaning and relevance of key legal concepts for the present or future health care professional. For the healthcare professional, it will inform and sensitize those who will deal with older persons about some of the current and potentially emerging legal issues they may encounter in providing services to older patients/clients, and to help them respond intelligently to legal issues and the responsibilities they impose.
