“Everybody Takes Care of Everybody”: Care Circulation and Care Relations in Three-Generation Cohabitation

Abstract

Demographic changes in Western societies have enabled long-term relationships between more generations and have significantly affected the structure and dynamic of family lives and contemporary families. This article presents a case study of three-generation cohabitation, the situation in which three generations live together in the same place at the same time. Drawing on in-depth interviews with three generations—grandparents, parents, and adult grandchildren—the article illuminates the characteristics of intergenerational caregiving and care-receiving. It uses the concept of care circulation to explore the everyday repeated exchanges of care among all family members and the caregiving constellations, arrangements, and distributions across the generations. We argue that the care is not unidimensional and unidirectional; rather, the care circulates among the family members cohabiting in three-generation households who are at the same time both caregivers and care-receivers.

Keywords

family care three-generation cohabitation care circulation

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