ABSTRACT
A new normative family life task has snuck up on the Western world: caring for older member(s) with cognitive impairment (CI). With the typical family experiencing at least some family members living into their 80s, and with the rates of signifi cant CI around 30 % of persons over age 85 (Jorm et al., 1987 ; Plassman et al., 2007 ), most families will now care for at least one family member with CI. This startling fact has not yet made headlines in the family therapy literature, but certainly takes up air time in personal conversations at conventions, cocktail hours, and dinner tables as we all struggle to navigate the challenges of these tasks in our own families. Indeed, juggling parent care and professional demands is a normative career challenge as well. This chapter addresses the signifi cant challenges faced by families of persons with one particular common source of cognitive impairment in later life, dementia, and the adaptive strategies that can guide them through this complicated family role. These strategies are extracted from a more comprehensive approach to intervening with aging and caregiving families, called Caregiver Family Therapy (CFT, Qualls & Williams, in press; Qualls & Anderson, 2009 ; Qualls & Noecker, 2009 ; Qualls, 2008 , 2003 ).
