From Publishers Weekly
Satow's insightful manual asserts that with proper preparation, middle-aged baby boomers charged with sick or elderly parents, even estranged ones, can find caring for them a rewarding, or at least tolerable, situation, one that need not erode anyone's integrity or sanity. Psychoanalyst and Brooklyn College sociology professor Satow's personal experience with her own difficult mother suggests that such care may actually mend long-conflicted relationships. She intercuts her clearly written advice with brief illustrative stories taken from interviews with 50 caregivers. As Satow airs and analyzes the complex array of feelings that can be brought on by the massive responsibilities of caring for an aged parent, duties made worse by previous or current selfish or manipulative behavior, she suggests coping strategies for becoming "more conscious about what [we experience] in the process of care giving." Satow's sympathy and useful advice will offer conflicted caregivers straightforward help in dealing with their ambivalent feelings toward parents who are in a terminal phase of life. Her belief that "it is normal and okay to feel ambivalent at times" about one's role is indeed reassuring. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Doing the Right Thing illustrates how early parent-child and sibling relationships color-sometimes painfully-the caregiving experience in midlife. There exist many resources about aging that offer practical help for caregivers, but this book takes a new approach: it focuses on caregiving as a developmental stage that provides us with an opportunity to work out some of the unresolved issues still lurking from childhood, and to enrich the relationship between the generations.

Based on the author's personal and clinical experience, Doing the Right Thing explores important issues such as:

- how to set limits to your caregiving and cope with your guilt
- how to forgive yourself when you feel angry with the parent for whom you are caring
- how taking care of an elderly parent can bring siblings closer or split them apart forever
- how taking care of an elderly parent can strengthen your marriage or destroy it - how gender affects caring for elderly parents.

About the Author
Roberta Satow, Ph.D., is chairperson of the Department of Sociology at Brooklyn College and is a practicing psychoanalyst in New York City. In addition to authoring Gender and Social Life, she has written numerous articles on sociological and psychoanalytic subjects.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Doing the Right Thing illustrates how early parent-child and sibling relationships color-sometimes painfully-the caregiving experience in midlife. There exist many resources about aging that offer practical help for caregivers, but this book takes a new approach: it focuses on caregiving as a developmental stage that provides us with an opportunity to work out some of the unresolved issues still lurking from childhood, and to enrich the relationship between the generations.

Based on the author's personal and clinical experience, Doing the Right Thing explores important issues such as:

- how to set limits to your caregiving and cope with your guilt
- how to forgive yourself when you feel angry with the parent for whom you are caring
- how taking care of an elderly parent can bring siblings closer or split them apart forever
- how taking care of an elderly parent can strengthen your marriage or destroy it - how gender affects caring for elderly parents.