Only daughters caring for their aging mothers in Ufa, Russia

Abstract

Russia is not the only country in the world that relies heavily on informal caregiving, but what makes Russia unique is the number of single-parent one-child families. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transition from state socialism to market capitalism, little has changed in terms of the social protection of older adults. Unaffordable home care services, low pensions, bifurcation of the formerly free healthcare into state and private sectors, the invisibility of people with disabilities, and the absence of quality nursing homes, have left adult children in Russia no choice but to bear the full burden of caregiving for their aging parents completely alone. Given the scarcity of research that examines informal caregiving in Russia in general and in provincial cities in particular, this study addresses this gap by centering on previously unheard voices of a unique group of women: only children of single mothers from Ufa, a metropolitan city in the Ural Mountains. Twenty middle-aged (M = 40.75, SD = 3.43), college-educated women participated in a two-hour, semi-structured interview. Inductive thematic analysis revealed three themes: incongruence with the microenvironment, aging in the “cement box,” and distrust of outsiders. The findings suggest material and cultural constraints that female caregivers face as they negotiate the mothers’ discordance with the microenvironment of Khrushchev-era apartments.

Keywords:

• Aging in Russia
• informal caregiving
• person-environment fit
• qualitative research
• single mothers

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Eva Kahana, Distinguished University Professor of Sociology, John Patrick Lynch Mills, JD, and Dr. Brooke Jespersen for their valuable feedback on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data (interview transcripts) are not publicly available due to IRB restrictions as it contains identifying data that could compromise the privacy of research participants. The study was not pre-registered.

Notes

1 Many websites and platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.) were closed as a part of the Western sanctions against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Zoom and Skype are still available to Russian residents but not to Russian businesses.