Webster Michelle
School of Law, Royal Holloway, University of London, Surrey, UK.
Sociol Health Illn. 2018 Jan;40(1):204-217. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12627. Epub 2017 Oct 11.
Despite large amounts of care for chronic conditions being provided within the family, information regarding the extent to which siblings contribute to informal care practices in families where a child has a chronic condition is limited. This article draws on multiple perspective data from 24 families that had a child with epilepsy. In doing so, the article illustrates siblings' significant contribution to caring for their brother or sister and further develops the alert assistant concept. Two additional distinct caring roles that the siblings took on are also outlined - the substitute parent and parenting assistant roles. The relationship between siblings' socio-demographic characteristics and their caring responsibilities is also explored. The paper's findings are that siblings who were older, female and those in families with a higher child to parent ratio took on more caring responsibilities. Consequently, this article contributes to the currently limited literature on siblings who care for a chronically ill brother or sister by increasing understandings of different caring roles and experiences of chronic illness in families.
尽管家庭中为慢性病提供了大量照料，但关于在有慢性病患儿的家庭中，兄弟姐妹对非正式照料行为的贡献程度的信息却很有限。本文借鉴了来自24个有癫痫患儿家庭的多视角数据。通过这样做，本文阐述了兄弟姐妹对照顾其兄弟姐妹的重大贡献，并进一步发展了警报助手概念。文中还概述了兄弟姐妹承担的另外两个不同的照料角色——替代父母和育儿助手角色。同时也探讨了兄弟姐妹的社会人口特征与其照料责任之间的关系。该论文的研究结果是，年龄较大、女性以及子女与父母比例较高家庭中的兄弟姐妹承担了更多的照料责任。因此，本文通过增进对家庭中不同照料角色和慢性病经历的理解，为目前关于照顾慢性病兄弟姐妹的有限文献做出了贡献。
