Abstract
Today there are large number of studies concering the problems of familial caregivers. However, little attention has been given to the process by which the caregivers coping strategy changes in a difficult situation. In order to understand caregiver's experiences, this paper tries to focus on the changing process of caregivers “routinization strategy”. The routinization strategy is divided into two ways: one is “drawing a line between caregiving tasks and non caregiving works”, the other is “shortcutting in interaction with the care recipient”. After an examination based on interviews with familial caregivers, we found that the increasing needs of caregiving tasks would lead caregivers to the following two problematic outcomes: first, they cannot “draw lines, second, it is difficult for them to gain the meaning from continuing to do caregiving. We further found that these two outcomes would lead caregivers to an ever more troubled situation.
