Interpreting the landscapes of care for older men in Delhi and Kolkata: Perspectives from care receivers and caregivers

Abstract

Landscapes of care/carescapes represent a recently emerging research area in geographies of care. Carescapes are both geographical settings within and across which care takes place and are subjectively experienced phenomena. However, within this field there is still relatively little research on the care needs and experiences of older men. This chapter redresses this by conducting 79 in-depth interviews of older men and their caregivers, collected from homes as well as care homes in Delhi and Kolkata. The analyses reveals that older men’s care needs, which ranged from personal, economic, health to emotional, were perceived to be inadequately addressed in rapidly transforming societies and family structures. However, the practice of intergenerational reciprocal care is strongly gendered and of involved inequalities of power. Here, the care relationships between older men and their caregivers are situated within wider socio-economic relations which influence the power of each other. Caringscapes in the Indian context are deeply rooted in filial obligation and intergenerational dependence, whereby older adults are entitled to receive care from their offspring in exchange for the care they had provided to their children.