How to Honor the Elderly from the Perspective of Women Caregiver in the Religious Families: a Qualitative Study

Islam is a religion that considers the care of the elderly as necessary and valuable and emphasizes it. Although many children do not take responsibility for caring for their elderly parents, there is evidence that religious women are committed to this task and care for their parents effectively. But today this is difficult from the point of view of some children, but the evidence shows that some of women caregiver in the religious families succeed in doing this, and the question arises as to how they accomplish this important task. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of how to honor the elderly from the perspective of women caregiver in the religious families. The study method was reflective theme analysis. Among the elderly women in Ardestan city, 12 people were selected and interviewed using purposive sampling method to participate in the study. The research tool was a semi-structured interview. Data were analyzed by six-step method of Clark and Brown method. The results of the analysis showed that successful care for the elderly contains four core themes, which are: Motivation to honor with codes organizing) religious and family motivation), honoring traits (personality traits, life during experiences), Reasons for honoring (religious education in the past, continuing education in the present) and How to resilience (emotional calming agents, how to spend free time, meaning in life ). According to the results, psychological and spiritual enrichment trainings can be provided for elderly caregivers to strengthen the necessary characteristics for generously caring and improving their resiliency.