These results demonstrate that use of adult day care by caregivers of dementia patients results in lower levels of caregiving-related stress and better psychological well-being when compared to that of controls.

Although predictors of nursing home placement have attracted a good deal of attention in gerontological research, the type and amount of family assistance offered to caregivers prior to institutionalization has not been extensively examined. This study analyzed the impact of family help on the timing of placement among cognitively impaired care recipients. Using longitudinal data from the Adult Day Care Collaborative Study, an event-history analysis was performed to determine the effects of family help after sociodemographic characteristics, caregiving stressors, and indicators of caregiver well-being were taken into account. Results showed that caregivers were far less likely to institutionalize their relatives when family members provided overnight help and assisted with activities of daily living care. These findings suggest that specific types of family help play an important role in delaying nursing home placement among older adults suffering from dementia.

The wear-and-tear hypothesis of caregiving (the longer care provided, the more psychological strain on caregivers) was examined using panel survey data from 112 adult children providing interhousehold care to an impaired elderly parent. Measures included subjective caregiving stress and perceived caregiving effectiveness ("wear") and depression and affect balance ("tear"). Contrary to the hypothesis, data revealed variability in children's adaptation to caregiving, improvement rather than deterioration being the norm. In a recursive path model, both subjective stress and perceived effectiveness were significant predictors of changes in depression. Depression was not significantly related to duration of caregiving. Discussion suggests that future researchers consider other types of caregivers and care settings, factors predicting variability in caregivers' adaptation over time, and changes as well as stability in care arrangements.

Three properties of gender identity-perceived similarity to other women, sense of common fate and centrality of gender to the sense of self-were measured in national surveys of women in the United States. Analyses of their relationships to gender consciousness support the general proposition that these properties of identity are implicated in different ways in collective discontent, criticism of the legitimacy of gender disparities and acceptance of change-oriented collective action. As predicted, the sense of common fate proved the most important, even after adjustments were made for the structural resources in women's lives that help them develop both a sense of common fate and gender consciousness.In the literature on political mobilization of collectivities, an important distinction has been drawn between group identity and group consciousness. Identity connotes the member's awareness of membership and feelings attached to being a member (Tajfel, 1978;Miller et al., 1981), while consciousness refers to the member's ideology about the group's position in society. Although writers who employ the concept of group consciousness invoke somewhat different terms, they all define it multidimensionally , involving a sense of collective discontent over the group's relative power, material resources or prestige; an appraisai of the legitimacy of the stratification system by which the group is favoured or disfavoured; and the belief that collective action is required to realize the group's interests (Morris & Murphy 1966; Portes, 1971; Jackman & Jackman, 1983; Gurin et al., 1980).* Validation of the distinction between identity and consciousness has been demonstrated in studies of subordinate groups prominent in American life. These studies show that consciousness is the more powerful predictor of political action (Miller et al., 1981) and identity of efficient processing of group information (Thomas, 1984; Gurin & Markus, 1985).relationship has been treated simplistically in the studies of mass publics as well as the experimental studies of intergroup relations. It is often assumed that identity and consciousness develop simultaneously as effects of social categorization and comparison (Tajfel, 1978) o r that consciousness follows automatically from identity-the inexorable culmination of a process, variously labelled decolonization (Fanon, 1963; Memmi, 1968), identity transformation (Hall et al., 1972), disassimilation (Hayes-Bautista, 1974) or nationalism (Isaacs, 1979) set in motion by the assertion of group identity. (Although Tajfel does not use the term consciousness, the new cognitions, reinterpretations and action orientations that he suggests parallel the components that constitute group consciousness. These components come into play when identity is insecure and members of denigrated groups either cannot or d o not want to leave the group.) However, the dynamics by which consciousness arises out of identity are usually not delineated, and the possibility that the relationship is problematic rather than automati...

Results highlight the importance of dyadic data and multilevel models for understanding depressive symptomatology in married couples. The influence of race/ethnicity merits greater attention in future research. Differences in findings between HRS and AHEAD suggest life-course, cohort, or methodological influences.

This study examined interrole conflict experienced by 278 women who simultaneously occupied 4 roles: parent care provider, mother to children at home, wife, and employee. Compared with women who experienced no conflict between parent care and their other roles, women reporting parent care conflict tended to have fewer socio-economic resources, to have older children, and to be caring for parents with greater impairment. Women who reported conflicts between parent care and employment were older; had more education; had marriages of longer duration; and had older, more self-sufficient children than women who reported conflict between the parent care role and the mother role. Some evidence was found for the hypothesis that interrole conflict between parent care and other roles mediates the relationship between parent care stress and psychosocial well-being. Results suggest that one way parent care stress exerts its deleterious effects on the well-being of adult daughters is through the incompatible pressures of parent care and other roles.

This research examined stress and rewards experienced by 95 women who were simultaneously occupying the roles of caregiver, mother, and wife. The study examined role-specific stress and rewards as predictors of well-being (physical health, positive affect, negative affect, and role overload) and examined the effects of an accumulation of role stress and role rewards across these 3 roles. Role rewards contributed unique variance to well-being, even after role stress had been considered. An accumulation of role stress across roles was related to poorer well-being, whereas an accumulation of role rewards was related to better well-being. Findings indicated that caregivers' experiences in multiple roles could both detract from and enhance their mental and physical health.

The objective of this study was to determine whether adult day service use was related to decreases in primary caregiving hours (i.e., the time caregivers spent on activities of daily living/instrumental activities of daily living and behavior problems for care recipients) and care recipient function for these domains. Three-month longitudinal data from the Adult Day Care Collaborative Study (N = 400) were used. Adult day service users reported greater decreases in hours spent on behavior problems when compared to nonusers, even after controlling for baseline differences between the two groups. In addition, adult day service users reported decreased frequency of behavior problems in their relatives who attended adult day programs. The findings suggest that adult day services, if used over time, are effective in restructuring caregiving time and may offer potential benefits not only to family caregivers but to community-residing older adults who have dementia as well.