Caring Responsibilities and Gainful Employment in Middle Age: A New Population Based Study in Sweden

The Swedish welfare model is based on the premises 1) the society, not the family, has the main responsibility for care, and 2) all adults are gainfully employed, from the time of employment until retirement. Sweden has a high proportion of women in the work force, also in their 50-60ies. Nonetheless, it is estimated that about 70 percent of all elderly care is performed by relatives. This study is a mixed method study and focus on caring responsibilities for elderly parents or other family members. An enquiry was made during spring 2013, of a random sample of 6000 individuals 45-66 years old (61.1% responses) and interviews from 40 carers in various caring situations has been made. It focuses weather the caring responsibility have any impact on paid work, maintenance and everyday life as well as their experience of public care, possibility to leave job and payment for care. Theoretically the study is connected to feministic welfare research. Of central value is to analyse gender, class, ethnicity and age. Early results shows that over 40% of the respondents give help and 30% of women and 27% of men, help and old, disabled or ill family member at least once a week and 15% of women and 12% of men help daily or several times a week. Care affects life in different ways; feeling mentally and physically exhausted, having difficulties to focus on work, less time for leisure. More women than men have made changes in their working life in order to manage the situation. Corresponding to 7% of women and 4% of men 45-66 years in population we can see that 100 000 women and 50 000 men has made changes in their working life; reduced working hours, stopped working, take early retirement as a result of caring.