Caregiver Sibling Resentment: Why It Happens and What You Can Do

What does the phrase caregiver sibling resentment mean to you?

Most of the time, it relates to times when one sibling is doing most of the caring work for aging parents. It’s a frustrating situation, where the caregiving sibling often feels overwhelmed and resentful of others.

Yet, this isn’t the only way things can pattern out.

Caregiving sibling resentment can also happen in the other direction, where siblings are resentful of the one providing care. This perspective might sound strange to the caregivers among you – you’re the one doing all the work, why would others be resentful? Yet, things do sometimes pan out this way.

Resentments and dramas like this often stem from each person being locked into their own viewpoint, without understanding where the others are coming from.

So, for this post, we’re going to look at some of the most common situations, followed by what you can do to work on sibling dramas and improve care.

Patterns of Sibling Behavior

One of the most helpful starting points is to suspend judgment.

Think of it this way. If there are conflicts going on, we often interact from an egoic perspective, where we’re trying to get others to see things our way. This perspective even impacts our ability to hear other people, as we’re focused on defending our position and looking for cracks in theirs.

There’s no authentic connection in doing this.

It’s also hard to move forward, given that your sibling is likely doing the exact same thing. To change the pattern, you’ll need to be brave and look for their perspective.

In the following sections, we’ll examine three types of sibling behavior that tend to create resentment. We’ll also consider possible motivations for these behaviors and why they aren’t always what they seem. 

The Sibling Who Won’t Help

Let’s begin with the sibling who refuses to help, given that this is the problem many caregivers experience.

The immediate question is why. Why isn’t your sibling pitching in?

You might have a knee-jerk story here – probably that your sibling is either lazy or selfish. Except… there are plenty of other more likely reasons, including the following.

Different Priorities

Many people see caregiving as a moral obligation. It’s something you should step up and do out of love or duty, regardless of the cost to you or others in your family. 

Others may see caregiving more as a choice, one to be weighed up along with other priorities.

Here are some examples of what this can look like:

• A young man chooses to establish his career and support his aging grandmother financially, rather than being an in-home family caregiver. Not doing so could mean sacrificing his future career path, plus his ability to save for his own retirement.
• A mother of two chooses not to have her aging father live with them, despite his needs, as the children need their mother’s support and it isn’t possible to meet everyone’s needs well.
• A man may choose not to have his aging mother live with him, choosing to prioritize his marriage.
• A woman may choose not to provide any support to her aging and emotionally abusive mother. While her mother wants her daughter to live with her and provide practical free hands-on support, the mother has more than enough money to pay for such support on her own.
• The son of an abusive father may refuse to provide care or financial support, regardless of his father’s needs. He doesn’t feel that he owes his father anything.

It’s worth remembering that a senior generally won’t be destitute if their children don’t provide hands-on care. There are care options for impoverished seniors and adult children may still pitch in financially anyway.

Some seniors even have the money to pay for a decent facility or in-home care themselves anyway. If they refuse to do so, does this really oblige their kids to step up?

Plenty of families are currently struggling financially or with stress as it is. They may simply not have the time or energy to add anything more to their plate, even if there’s an urgent need.

They Don’t Understand the Situation

Another common issue is that siblings don’t realize the extent of what’s going on. They might think that your aging parent is much more capable than they are. They might even think you’re exaggerating the situation, perhaps because you want money or control.

Such claims aren’t as absurd as they might sound.

After all, many aging parents want to appear independent and strong, so they’ll act more competent than they actually are, especially around people they don’t see often.

Your sibling might also just see the parent when they’re at the best, like after they’ve had a good night’s sleep and are excited about a visit. That’s vastly different than how a caregiver sees the parent at 3 am after yet another incontinence accident.

Besides, some caregivers do actually exaggerate the situation. This could be for their own benefit or it could come from a place of fear and overwhelm instead.

Regardless of the reason, a sibling that doesn’t understand the seriousness of the situation is likely to be unwilling to help.

The Excessively Committed Caregiver

A completely different situation is an adult child who is overcommitted to their caregiving role. There are two main situations to consider here.

Providing More Care Than Is Needed

Some adult children provide too much care. This often means they’re helping the senior with things the senior can actually do themselves.

Doing so can have serious consequences.

First, excessive support can easily reduce the senior’s independence. It’s easy for a senior to fall into the trap of not pushing themselves because someone else is picking up the slack.

Members of caregiving forums often talk about this, highlighting cases like an aging mother who won’t cook for herself because she knows if she waits long enough, someone else will do it.

People who provide care like this may push family members to do the same. This easily breeds resentment, as siblings may feel that the demands are completely unrealistic.

Plus, caregivers who do too much tend to burn out. This makes them more likely to be judgmental about others and can compromise the quality of their care.

This is a particularly big problem when too much care is provided while the senior is fairly healthy and independent. In that situation, care needs are only going to increase with time, while the caregiver is likely to burn out quickly.

Note: Here we’re talking about cases of providing excessive care and enabling dependent behaviors. This isn’t the same as providing extra support when a loved one is suffering from depression or some other mental health condition. Such situations can require very different approaches to care.

Refusing To Accept Help

Another situation is where the caregiving sibling refuses to accept help from anyone else.

This sometimes comes from the perspective that no one else knows the aging parent well enough. The caregiver may think that anyone else will get things wrong, put the parent in danger, or do something similar.

Much of the time, the truth is that other people will provide care differently, but not necessarily worse. Siblings who are new to providing care might make more mistakes at first. They’ll also learn, just like the caregiver themselves did.

There may be also a control aspect at play.

For example, a caregiver who is terrified of losing their mother may feel safer if they can control as many things as possible. The idea of a sibling taking their mother out for a day trip could be terrifying, as that means there are hours that the caregiver can’t account for – time where anything could happen.

The Sibling Who Wants To Help

Finally, we have siblings who want to help with caregiving, but can’t. This can pattern out in a few different ways.

Different Ideas of What’s Needed

Supporting an aging parent is a balancing act between keeping them safe and promoting their autonomy. Siblings can have vastly different values here, which leads to many differences in caregiving decisions and priorities.

A common example is where one sibling thinks that the aging parent should remain at home, even if this requires someone to live with the parent and keep them safe. Other siblings may disagree and feel that the parent would be safer and better cared for in a facility.

In that situation, the siblings wanting their parent in a facility may be willing to contribute financially but aren’t willing to provide hands-on care. This leaves the sibling who wants the parent cared for at home doing the bulk of the caregiving work, which may be far too much for one person.

Such differences can lead to resentment all around.

Limited Resources

Some siblings may not be in a position to help, despite wishing that they could. This might be the result of being financially strapped or having an intense job that has little flexibility for family crises.

Other times, the issue might relate to intangible resources instead.

Imagine a sister who has battled with depression and anxiety her whole life. Staying functional and relatively happy could be very difficult for her, so she needs to be ultra-cautious about her emotional commitments.

What about a brother with chronic fatigue who finds everyday tasks incredibly difficult?

Those are just two examples of many.

People fight all kinds of invisible battles, many of which they don’t talk about. Just because someone is doing less than you doesn’t mean they’re being lazy.

What You Can Do

The behaviors and motivations discussed in this post show that things are rarely straightforward. Siblings who don’t provide care often aren’t doing so for selfish or lazy reasons, while some caregiving siblings may be over-committed and have a focus on control.

These are just a few examples.

The point is that humans are complicated. Most, as Brene Brown puts it, are doing the best they can. It’s just that their version of best might not look anything like what you expect. 

Needless to say, you can’t change your siblings into new people. You can’t make them instantly see the situation the way you do. So, what are your options?

Have Honest Conversations

The most powerful approach is to suspend judgment and start to have honest conversations.

Doing so often begins with trying to understand them more. Instead of trying to change their mind or leaping to judgment, ask them about what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling.

Open-ended questions are a powerful tool here. You might ask how they feel about your aging parents, what they’re currently stressed about, what’s draining them, what they’re afraid of. The more you understand, the better you can communicate and look for solutions that help everyone.

Withhold Judgement

As much as you can, try to hold back on judging.

It may help to remember that you don’t have all the facts. It’s going to take time, conversations, and honesty to understand your sibling’s decisions. There may even be some things they don’t understand either.

For example, you may have asked them for help when you really needed it and they didn’t come through for you. What if there was a good reason? What if they were dealing with a crisis too, one they didn’t feel confident enough to talk to you about?

The only way to understand is to be honest and talk.

Be Flexible

Flexibility is important too.

This includes allowing siblings to help however they can rather than expecting their help to come in a specific form.

For example, your brother might only be able to contribute financially, but not practically. But, some of that financial assistance could be used to pay for an in-home caregiver and provide you with some respite.

Once you have an open dialog in your family, it should be easier to work out who is able to help in different areas. When doing so, think about the strengths of each person. Who has more time? Who has more money? What does each person bring to the table?

Focus on Acceptance

Ultimately, your family mightn’t be able to help as much as you hope (or perhaps at all – some siblings are adversarial no matter what).

This is where acceptance comes into play. The goal here isn’t to change what’s happening but to change your relationship to it instead.

In the case of caregiver sibling resentment, you’d probably be working on accepting the fact that your sibling won’t help with caregiving. Acceptance helps with some of the sting of them not providing support.

Plus, when you’re not so focused on what your sibling is or isn’t doing, you can start to find approaches that actually help.

Acceptance can feel like giving in.

It may seem like you’re allowing your sibling or siblings to get away with being lazy.

But, be honest, is holding onto the resentment helping the situation? Most of the time resentment will be making your life worse, while your siblings are simply off living their own lives.

Acceptance actually comes with an odd little contradiction in that accepting the situation is often what leads to change. This may be because acceptance helps us to relax into what’s happening. Because we’re no longer holding so tightly to a particular solution, we end up more open to alternative ways forward.