The Influence of Historical Roles of Caregiving on African-Americans Today: A Multi-Dimensional Perspective

This paper examines the historical tradition of African caregiving in African American culture and how this cultural tradition may continue to influence African American caregivers today. This paper investigates, highlights, and identifies the ways this cultural tradition of caregiving from Africa to America has evolved and the extent to which it continues today. African mutual helping tradition, contemporarily known as caregiving in America, is a prevalent, multidimensional mutual helping tradition among the African American population. This multidimensional approach, not only promotes reciprocity, but is also exemplified in the various roles and tasks that African and African American elders performed. Reciprocity in the exchange o f support is often neglected in the caregiving literature although it is considered important in relation to well-being in the general literature on support. One unique aspect o f this paper is that African American culture and its ingrained ideology of mutual helping tradition is carefully examined in the context of caregiving. Caregiving needs to be put into a multidimensional paradigm embodying history and culture, of the caregivers background. The paper provides an explanation o f how and why caregiver burden levels, caregiver mastery, traditional caregiving ideologies, and caregiver appraisals might be attributable to differences in the heterogeneous makeup o f historical backgrounds and life experiences among racial/ethnic groups, in particular African American caregivers.