A Blessing and a Challenge: Unpacking Boundary Ambiguities Experienced by Caregivers of Older Adults

Paper Title

A Blessing and a Challenge: Unpacking Boundary Ambiguities Experienced by Caregivers of Older Adults

Publication Info

• Topic area: Caregiving for older adults and boundary management in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI).
• Keywords: caregiving, boundary ambiguity, mastery, older adults, care ecologies, Human–Computer Interaction, digital technologies, emotional labor, situational awareness, agency.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Caregivers of older adults face unstable, permeable, and elastic boundaries due to evolving care demands, feelings of guilt, and unclear role expectations. Existing technologies focus on logistical support but often fail to address the emotional and relational complexities of caregiving.
• Significance: Understanding and addressing boundary ambiguity is critical for improving caregivers’ emotional well-being, maintaining their sense of control, and ensuring sustainable caregiving practices.
• Motivation and related work: Prior HCI research has explored logistical tools for caregiving and the lived experiences of caregiver stress. However, gaps remain in understanding how caregivers navigate boundary ambiguity and how technologies can better support them in managing these uncertainties.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The study applies the concepts of boundary ambiguity and mastery to analyze caregivers’ experiences and proposes design implications for technologies that support ongoing boundary negotiation.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduces boundary ambiguity and mastery as analytical lenses to HCI caregiving research.
  2. Highlights the dual strategies caregivers use: internal reframing (cognitive and emotional reinterpretation) and external negotiation (redistributing care responsibilities).
  3. Identifies the limitations of existing technologies in addressing caregivers’ needs for situational awareness while respecting care recipients’ privacy.
  4. Proposes design implications for translucent, configurable technologies that support ongoing boundary negotiation.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted 15 semi-structured interviews with informal caregivers of older adults in the U.S.
  • Used validated survey instruments (Boundary Ambiguity and Mastery scales) to contextualize qualitative findings.
  • Analyzed data through iterative coding to identify themes related to unstable boundaries, coping strategies, and challenges in care ecologies.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Caregivers’ boundaries are unstable, frequently stretched by care demands, guilt, and evolving relationships.
  • Internal reframing strategies include drawing on cultural and spiritual beliefs to manage emotional tolls.
  • External negotiation involves redistributing care tasks across family, formal caregivers, and technology.
  • Persistent boundary ambiguity leaves caregivers uncertain about how far their responsibilities should extend.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Provides a nuanced understanding of boundary ambiguity and its emotional impacts, which is underexplored in prior HCI caregiving research.
  • Offers actionable design recommendations for technologies that address both logistical and emotional aspects of caregiving.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Semi-structured interviews with 15 caregivers aged 19–77, representing diverse caregiving roles (primary, secondary, local, long-distance).
  • Analysis of Boundary Ambiguity (BA) and Mastery (M) scores to contextualize qualitative data.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Did not include care recipients’ perspectives, which could provide additional insights into boundary negotiations.
  • Findings may lack nuance for specific caregiving contexts (e.g., cultural groups, health conditions).
  • Future research could explore structural constraints (e.g., employment policies, healthcare systems) that shape caregiving boundaries.

Summary

This study investigates how caregivers of older adults navigate unstable and elastic boundaries shaped by care demands, guilt, and evolving relationships. Using the concepts of boundary ambiguity and mastery, it identifies two coping strategies: internal reframing through cultural and spiritual beliefs, and external negotiation by redistributing care tasks. While these strategies provide temporary relief, they do not fully resolve the underlying ambiguity or practical challenges of caregiving. The paper proposes design implications for technologies that support translucent, configurable boundary negotiation, balancing caregivers’ needs for situational awareness with care recipients’ privacy and autonomy. These findings contribute to HCI by extending the focus beyond logistical support to address the emotional and relational complexities of caregiving.