Caring in intimate relationships is the practice of providing care and support to an intimate relationship partner. Caregiving behaviours are aimed at reducing the partner's distress and supporting their coping efforts in situations of either threat or challenge. Caregiving may include emotional support (expressions of care, affection, sympathy, and encouragement) and/or instrumental support (provision of information, advice, and tangible resources).
Effective caregiving behaviour enhances the care-recipient's psychological well-being, as well as the quality of the relationship between the caregiver and the care-recipient. However, certain suboptimal caregiving strategies may be either ineffective or even detrimental to coping.
The caregiving behavioural system
Evolutionary origins
Attachment theory, an influential theoretical framework for the study of intimate relationships and personality development, argues that all humans are born with the capacity and motivation to engage in caregiving behaviours aimed at providing protection and support to close others. These behaviours are organized by an innate behavioural system, called the caregiving system, which is believed to have emerged over the course of primate evolution to ensure the survival of vulnerable offspring. That is, because infants in many primate species, including humans, are highly altricial (i.e., developmentally immature and helpless at birth), they cannot survive without caregiver support and protection. Attachment theory proposes that this evolutionary pressure favoured the emergence of the caregiving behavioural system, which functions to safeguard the vulnerable dependent from harm by providing them with protection, comfort, and help during times of threat or need. Although this system was first conceptualized in child–parent bonds, its operation has since been established in adult intimate relationships, where both partners may occasionally take on the role of caregiver.
Functions of the caregiving system
According to attachment theory, the two goals of the caregiving behavioural system are to protect close others from harm and decrease their suffering during times of threat, and to promote close others’ personal growth and exploratory behaviour. Attachment theorists call the former aspect of caregiving behaviour “providing a safe haven”, and the latter “providing a secure base”. The caregiving system is therefore likely to be activated when an individual perceives that a close relationship partner is experiencing danger or distress, or when the partner has an opportunity for exploration, learning, or mastery of a new skill, and could benefit from help in pursuing the opportunity or from celebration of their accomplishments and goal strivings.
Interrelation with attachment system
Attachment theory also postulates that all humans possess an innate attachment behavioural system that motivates them to seek proximity to a caregiver (also called an attachment figure) during times of threat or need. Caregiving behaviour is therefore complementary to attachment behaviour. Furthermore, attachment theory argues that the effectiveness of the caregiving behaviour enacted determines the quality of the attachment bond between the caregiver and care-recipient, as well as shapes the care-recipient's general expectations of social support. In this model, a history of receiving effective care from intimate others (whether parents in childhood or romantic partners in adulthood) promotes a sense of attachment security – an interpersonal orientation characterized by the expectation that other people may be relied on for support, and subsequent comfort with intimacy and emotional closeness. In contrast, a history of interactions with cold or rejecting caregivers promotes attachment avoidance – an interpersonal orientation marked by discomfort with intimacy, a reluctance to rely on others for support, and the tendency to suppress emotional distress. Care that is inconsistent or intrusive is believed to foster attachment anxiety, which is characterized by excessive preoccupation with intimate relationships and inability to effectively regulate one's own emotional distress.
Effective caregiving
Key concepts
The central component of effective caregiving is the taking on of what Batson (1991) called an empathic stance toward another person's suffering or needs. This means adopting the perspective, or "putting oneself in the shoes," of the partner in order to help lessen their distress in a stressful situation, or to help them pursue personal growth and development goals in challenging contexts. The empathic stance is characterized by two key, related components: sensitivity and responsiveness (although note that these terms are sometimes used interchangeably in the caregiving and social support literatures). Sensitivity refers to the ability to effectively detect and interpret the partner's cues of distress, worry, or need, and to provide the type and amount of support that is well matched to the partner's wants and needs. This tailoring of caregiving efforts to the particular characteristics of the specific situation is essential for effective care. Responsiveness is the ability to provide support in a way that makes the partner feel understood (i.e., the caregiver has accurately captured the speaker's problem, needs, and emotions), validated (i.e., the caregiver confirms that the care recipient is a valued individual and that the recpieint's feelings and responses in the situation are reasonable), and cared for (i.e., caregiver should communicate affection and concern). Caregiving that lacks these two components may be ineffective or even detrimental to the care-recipient's well-being. For example, a study investigating the adjustment of breast cancer patients found that these women varied in the types of the support they desired, and mismatches between the type of support wanted and the type of support received (i.e., low sensitivity to the partner's unique support needs) predicted worse adjustment. Unhelpful attempts at social support include: minimization (e.g., downplaying or denying the problem), maximization (e.g., catastrophizing, making the problem seem unwieldy or unresolvable), blaming or criticizing the partner for their misfortune, inducing feelings of guilt or indebtedness, and overinvolvement (e.g., being overly protective, making the care-recipient feel incompetent, inserting oneself into the problem when the partner wishes to solve it independently).
Invisible support
Even well-intentioned support can negatively impact the care recipient's psychological adjustment to stressful events if it is inappropriate or excessive, or inadvertently highlights the fact that the care recipient does not have sufficient skills or resources to handle the stressor by themself. Consequently, Niall Bolger and colleagues have put forward the idea that support is most effective when it is invisible, or operates outside of the care-recipient's direct awareness. To investigate this proposition, the researchers recruited couples in which one member was a law student preparing to undergo a highly stressful event, the New York State Bar Examination, and had both members of the couple complete daily diary entries about given and received emotional support. They found that the law students exhibited heightened levels of depression on days they reported receiving support, but lowered levels of depression on the days when their partners reported providing more support than the law students reported receiving. That is, participants in this study gained most psychological benefits from support they were not explicitly aware of having received. However, other researchers have argued that the responsiveness of enacted support is a more important factor than the visibility of the support. One study examining the effects of visible and invisible support on emotional and relationship well-being showed that visible support was linked to neutral or positive outcomes when it was high in responsiveness, and invisible support was linked to negative outcomes when it was low in responsiveness. That is, visible support is not always negative and invisible support is not always positive, but the effectiveness of both types of support hinges on responsiveness.
Secure base function of caregiving
Definition and functions
In addition to giving support and reassurance during distress, another important function of caregiving within intimate relationships is the provision of support for a relationship partner's personal growth, exploration, and goal strivings. In attachment theory, this type of support is called providing a secure base and is postulated to encourage the relationship partner's confident, autonomous exploration of the environment outside of the attachment relationship. This phenomenon was originally observed in young children; children whose parents showed more intrusiveness were less likely to engage in play and exploration in a novel environment.
Components of the secure base
Feeney and Thrush (2010) have identified three main functional components of secure base caregiving. First, individuals can support their relationship partner's exploratory, autonomous behaviour by being available in case support is needed. This can include actions such as removing obstacles to the partner's goal pursuit (for example, taking over some household chores to free up time for the partner to engage in a new activity), being sensitive and responsive to the partner's communications of distress, and communicating readiness to help in the event that support becomes needed. Second, effective caregiving does not unnecessarily interfere with exploration. That is, effective caregivers do not provide support when it is neither needed nor desired, attempt to take over or control the activity, or disrupt the partner's goal strivings. Third, partners should communicate encouragement and acceptance of exploration (i.e., convey enthusiasm about the pursuit rather than suggest that it is not worthwhile or will somehow detract from the relationship). Individuals who perceive their partners to be available to help are more persistent in the performance of challenging activities, whereas individuals whose partners show more interference during an activity show less persistence at the task, poorer performance, less enthusiasm for the challenge, greater negativity/hostility toward their partner, and decreases in self-esteem. Partners' communications of enthusiasm are related to better performance, heightened enthusiasm, better mood, increases in state self-esteem, enhanced self-perceptions, greater enjoyment, and more positive feelings toward the partner.
Dependency paradox