The sociological stakes of attitudes toward the families and care of older adults with dementia.

Abstract

This forum essay calls for greater sociological attention to the theoretical and empirical study of attitudes about the families and care of older adults living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD; dementia). Investigating these attitudes can help expand our understanding not only of the social experience of older adults with dementia, but also of family members and caregivers, as dementia is often highly stigmatized, memory loss changes relationships, and relationship dynamics influence care provision and inequalities. Attitudes and norms function at multiple levels - individual, family, and societal - and have large-scale consequences for social systems and inequality in an aging and increasingly diverse United States, where a growing number of older adults have dementia and family caregiving is normative. We briefly highlight demographic trends and interdisciplinary developments that underscore the urgency of and advantages to addressing these attitudes in sociology specifically. We conclude with a call to action and recommendations for scholars seeking to pursue related research within four relevant subfields within sociology: families, aging in the life course, stratification (race, gender, class), and medical sociology.