Family caring and caring in nursing.

Knowledge concerning family caring is developing within the caregiving literature while knowledge of caring is growing separately in the nursing literature. Both nurses (identified with caring) and family carers (identified with caregiving) experience a division of the affective and the instrumental dimensions of caring. Moreover, a historical perspective reveals that caring in nursing and family caring are faced with a common dilemma: caring in a society that undervalues caring. It is suggested that nurses, in the process of reconciling the dimensions of caring for their profession, consider family caring as a unified experience as well.