This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Eldercare, typically considered a family obligation, is evolving to adapt to demographic shifts that make reliance on spouses and children less assured. "The number of older adults who have never married or are divorced has been increasing, so we have more people aging alone," said Deborah Carr, a sociologist at Boston University who has investigated these trends.
"The proportion who are childless, by choice or not, is also growing," she added, and families with children have fewer of them than in past generations. Geographic distances or family estrangements also fuel the need for other kinds of caregivers—roles that friends or neighbors can fill. How commonly do friends step into caregiving gaps?
A study in JAMA Network Open, led by researchers at the University of Michigan, looked into friends and neighbors serving as caregivers, usually in supplementary roles. They used data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study, in which more than 2,600 older people with health limitations (average age: 79) identified friends and family members who provided help. Family members were most likely to care for aging relatives, but about 14% of participants identified friends (including neighbors) in that role.
That represents 2.4 million caregiving friends nationally, the authors estimated. Last year, a national survey by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving put the proportion of caregivers supporting nonrelatives at 11%. "Friends are among the auxiliary caregivers who have not been acknowledged," said Karen Fingerman, a gerontologist at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of a commentary accompanying the study.
"We neglect the sacrifices they make." The study, believed to be the first nationwide look at caregiving friends, found they functioned differently from relatives. They're unlikely to live with the person they're helping, for example, and rarely serve as the sole caregiver. "They provide fewer care hours," said Yee To Ng, a gerontologist and lead author of the study, which found that friends supplied 18 hours of help a month on average, compared with about 67 hours from family.
"Friends are more likely to provide transportation," Ng said. Two-thirds of caregiving friends drive their friends around; shopping, helping people go outside, preparing meals and accompanying patients to medical appointments round out the top five tasks. On the other hand, "there are some tasks friends might not be well equipped to provide or be comfortable with," Ng said.
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