Care—An Issue for the Whole Family

Abstract

At this time in the Federal Republic of Germany around two million people are in need of care. Around 1.4 million of these are cared for at home—for the most part by family members—partly with professional support. The family thus continues to be “the largest nursing service in the nation.” And it is mostly women who feel responsible for the care of family members. The editors do not wish to limit themselves only to the pressures on the care-giving women in their book In guten wie in schlechten Tagen (In Sickness and in Health). They place in the foreground generational and gendered relationships that have a great influence on familial nursing relationships. In the book Pflegegeschichten (Nursing Stories) around 40 care-giving relatives speak for themselves by telling their “own” personal “nursing stories.”