ABSTRACT
It would be hard to overestimate the emotional and material costs of caring revealed by the caring biographies of our respondents. The investment in caring as both labour and love has a profound impact on the whole fabric of the carer’s life and only in a minority of cases can the caring experience be described as a straightforwardly loving and balanced family relationship involving personal care. In other words, the giving of care necessarily involved more than the work of tending. It required psychological adjustment to the elderly person’s deteriorating condition and to the changing quality of the relationship between carer and person cared for; it required careful balancing to maintain the other aspects of the carer’s life which she considered important; and it required energy, determination, and emotional fortitude to enlist aid from external sources. Nevertheless, carers may suffer complete breakdown during or after caring and still be glad they cared.
