Focus on Home: What Time‐Use Data Can Tell About Caregiving to Adults

Care by adults to other adults is being increasingly transferred from formal public institutions to the private home. To learn more about the nature and situation of Canadian adults providing care at home to other adults, we analyzed data from Statistics Canada's 1998 social survey of 10,749 persons. Data included time‐use and respondents' sociodemographic, cultural, work, and leisure characteristics, as well as outcome factors. We found 212 respondents (about 2%) providing personal, medical, or other care to other household adults on the day studied. We compared them to those not found to provide these services. The article explores time‐use trade‐offs, feelings of stress, and the ramifications of gender, age, and paid work in this newly reemerging use of household space.