Retirement hard for working carers
Research shows that retirement can enhance or undercut well being of working carers, who face stresses of maintaining dual, competing responsibilities.
Doctors Jungmeen Kim and Phyllis Moen reported on the evidence on the retirement well being relationship in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.
“Exiting from one’s primary ‘career’ job can be a key life change, transforming one’s social and physical worlds. Roles, relationships, and daily routines change, with concomitant shifts in income and health,” they wrote.
The researchers said the evidence on the relationship between retirement and subjective well being is inconsistent. Some studies showed “significant associations between retirement and decreased life satisfaction and greater psychological distress; others found positive associations”.
Kim and Moen identified three factors that contribute most to well being in retirement.
- Economic resources
- Social relationship
- Personal resources
“People with inadequate incomes and financial problems are especially likely to experience dissatisfaction,” they said.
The difficulty of maintaining full time work over many years of caring responsibilities means many carers struggle to put away enough superannuation to fund retirement.
Marriage and marital quality and personal relationships are also decisive factors, but relationships are often fraught for working carers, who can struggle to make time for themselves, children and spouses.
Some researchers have found that retirement does not necessarily bring couples closer together, arguing that your enjoyment of retirement, perhaps the end of stress you had always fantasised about, might depend on your spouse continuing to work and bring in the cash. If both partners retire, Kim and Moen said, it could just mean money worries as usual, hardly a recipe for twilight marital bliss.
There are problems if only one partner retires, too: in Kim and Moen’s study, “the lowest marital satisfaction reported was by wives who were still in the workforce but whose husbands were not”.
Seventy one per cent of primary carers and 54% of all carers in Australia are women (Carers Australia), so it is concerning that Kim and Moen’s research shows “women tend to have more negative attitudes toward retirement, plan for it less, adjust to it more poorly, and are more likely to experience depression following retirement”.
Other research shows that people who are sad, angry, frustrated, isolated, or vulnerable are more likely to sicken and die sooner after retirement than active, well connected people engaged in their communities (Friedman and Martin, 2007).
Carers unfortunately fall inside that demographic: Carers Australia reports that in 2003, 72% of carers surveyed said they were often worried or depressed, often felt angry or resentful and had had a stress related illness at some point.
