Abstract
Understanding retirement decisions is increasingly important due to demographic ageing and longer life expectancy. Contributing to the theme working into older age, our study adopts a qualitative approach to investigate the retirement decision-making of nurses over 50 in Ireland and the Czech Republic, focusing on work-family spillover. We employ a life course perspective, considering how past experiences, current circumstances, and future expectations with regard to caring influence retirement decisions, supplemented by a political economy of ageing perspective. Based on interviews with 23 Czech and 40 Irish nurses, we explore the dynamics of managing both formal and informal caregiving roles. Findings highlight the unique impact of work-family spillover on nurses, who leverage their professional expertise in informal care and seek to balance the challenges of providing both formal and informal caregiving. The research illustrates how work-family spillover affects retirement planning taking into account not only current circumstances but also previous experiences with caregiving, previous policies and anticipated future informal caregiving roles. Through comparative analysis, we examine how the distinctive retirement employment and family friendly policies in Ireland and the Czech Republic influence these decisions. This paper discusses the importance of considering a life course perspective together with work-family spillover theory in retirement decision-making, and for policies that reflect the complex caregiving challenges faced by nurses.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Economic and Demographic Perspectives on Aging
KEYWORDS
Life course, Retirement decision, Nurses, Caring, Informal care, Qualitative research
