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Resources for Educators

The following are recommended resources for educators interested in incorporating family caregiving into their academic courses or training. Many are useful in work with family caregivers in community or residential settings.

Books
The following are examples of books that can be used as teaching resources:
  • Bailey, W. A., & Harrist, A. W. (2018). Family caregiving: Fostering resilience across the life course. Springer Publishing Company.
  • Burgio, L. D, Gaugler, J. E., & Hilgeman, M. M. (Eds) (2016). The spectrum of family caregiving for adults and elders with chronic illness. Oxford University Press.
  • Gaugler, J. E., & Kane, R. L. (Eds.) (2015). Family caregiving in the new normal. Academic Press.
  • Mace, N. L., & Rabins, P. V. (2006). The 36 hour day: A family guide to caring for persons with Alzheimer’s disease, related dementing illnesses, and memory loss in later life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Qualls, S. H., & Williams, A.A. (2013). Caregiver Family Therapy Empowering Families to Meet the Challenges of Aging. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
  • Shifren, K. (Ed.). (2009). How caregiving affects development: Psychological implications for child, adolescent and adult caregivers. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

The following are personal testimonials about caregiving from leading researchers in the fields of caregiving and mental health. These resources may be used to discuss intersections between personal and professional experience.

  • Kleinman, A. (2009). Caregiving: The odyssey of becoming more human. The Lancet, 373(9660), 292-293. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60087-8 
  • Fredman, L. (2017). Interconnections between my research and experience as a caregiver: Impacts on empirical and personal perspectives. The Gerontologist, 57(1), 40-45. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnw113 
  • Winakur, J. (2005). What are we going to do with Dad? Health Affairs, 24, 1064-1072. 
  • Winakur, J. (2007). Dad’s legacy. Health Affairs, 26, 1728-1734.
Articles

Primary source articles on caregiving can also be useful in teaching. The following journals are among those that publish research on family caregiving. In addition, some specific articles focused on caregiving for children are noted.

Journals
Bibliography
Movies
Selected Movies with Caregiving Themes
  • A Star is Born (substance abuse, sibling caregiving).
  • A Warm Wind (family caregiver for Iraq war veteran).
  • About A Boy (importance of nonfamily members in a family structure).
  • Age-Old Friends (long-term care, family relations, social support in late life).
  • Amour (husband caring for spouse with vascular dementia; ending that may not make for an appropriate recommendation for caregivers).
  • Away From Her (intergenerational relations, family caregiving, caring for a parent, Alzheimer’s disease).
  • Beautiful Boy (addiction, parental caregiving).
  • Big Fish (death, dying and coming to terms with a difficult parent, somewhat fantastical).
  • Caregiving documentaries.
  • Chronic (male Hospice nurses cares for patients in their homes).
  • Dad (intergenerational relations, family caregiving, caring for a parent).
  • Fred Won’t Move Out (intergenerational relations, aging in place, dementia caregiving).
  • Gen Silent (LGBT aging documentary).
  • I Never Sang for My Father (caring for a parent, family relations, intergenerational relations).
  • Intouchables (French movie about a paraplegic).
  • Iris (love and intimacy in life-span context, Alzheimer’s disease).
  • Little Miss Sunshine (family caregiving for a uncle with mental illness and an aging grandfather).
  • Lorenzo's Oil (caring for children with disabilities, family caregiving).
  • Love Story (spousal caregiving, death and dying).
  • Me Before You (formal caregiver forms close bond with a man left paralyzed from an accident).
  • My Sister’s Keeper (family relations, family impacts of cancer, death and dying).
  • Nebraska (father with cognitive impairment and estranged son road trip).
  • Robot & Frank (aging & technology, robot caregiver).
  • Silver Linings Playbook (caregiving for Bi-Polar disorder, family caregiving).
  • Simple Life (male filmmaker takes care of his family’s housemaid after she suffers a stroke).
  • Still Alice (focused on a woman with early Alzheimer's).
  • Still Mine (spousal caregiving, Alzheimer’s disease, person-environment fit).
  • Tatie Danielle (personality in later life, gender and aging, family caregiving, social exchange model of aging, humor and aging).
  • Terms of Endearments (intergenerational relations, family caregiving, death and dying).
  • The Fundamentals of Caring (formal caregiver and disabled teen form a bond and embark on a road trip).
  • The Judge (caring for a difficult/estranged father after mother's death).
  • The Notebook (Alzheimer’s disease, spousal caregiving).
  • The Rain Man (sibling caregiving, Autism).
  • The Savages (intergenerational relations, family caregiving, caring for a parent).
  • The Theory of Everything (ALS, biography of Stephen Hawking).
  • The Trip to Bountiful (meaning of and attachment to place, intergenerational relations, caring for a parent, rural aging).
  • Up (animated film; family caregiving, intergenerational relationships, death and dying).
  • Volver (mother-child relationship, mother comes back into daughter's life after a tragedy to help fix it, not necessarily obviously caregiving, but about family structure).
  • What They Had (family relations, spousal caregiving, Alzheimer’s disease).
  • What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (developmental disability, caring for a sibling, parent caring).
  • You’re Not You (ALS caregiving, formal caregiver forms a close bond with care recipient).
Last updated: 2020Date created: 2011

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