Narratives of Personhood and Caregiving in Ontario Long-Term Care Homes During COVID-19

Abstract

Drawing on narratives recorded from family members of residents in long-term care homes in Ontario, Canada, during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, in this paper, I present a two-pronged argument. First, following Taylor (2008) and Seaman (2018, 2020) I suggest that family caregiving for residents of long-term care homes helps to sustain residents’ personhood: the recognition of their identity as an ongoing participant in their social universe. The second part of my argument is that caregiving is a multifaceted and paradoxical endeavour. While caregiving can be a transformative and reciprocal practice of self-actualization (cf. Kleinman 2012; Kleinman and van der Geest 2009), at times it can also be troubled, ambivalent, and stressful (Cook and Trumble 2020). At its best, caregiving is a two-way street, enabling the maintenance of personhood for the care recipient, and validating the caregiver’s sense of ‘moral agency,’ or what medical anthropologist Neely Myers (2015, 13) defines as the capacity to be recognized in one’s local sphere as a good person who can make intimate connections to others. When caregiving goes awry, however, it leads to frustration, despair, and a sense of moral failure for the caregiver. For the care recipient, non-recognition and the loss of personhood can lead to social death and may also hasten physical decline. I conclude that for both professional and family caregivers of long-term care residents, systemic improvement of social and material support is needed to mitigate the challenges inherent in the recognition of personhood in caregiving relationships.