New Burdens or More of the Same? Comparing Grandparent, Spouse, and Adult-Child Caregivers

Strawbridge, William J.; Wallhagen, Margaret; Shema, Sarah J.; Kaplan, George A.

doi:10.1093/geront/37.4.505

Cited by 170 publications

(117 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Caring activities often are physically exhausting and emotionally draining, and can isolate caregivers from friends and other social supports. Many caregivers report high levels of stress, depression, and physical health problems, and experience higher mortality rates than noncaregivers (Bookwala, Yee, and Schulz 2000;Schulz and Beach 1999;Strawbridge et al 1994;Yee and Schulz 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Elder Care on Women's Labor Supply

Johnson¹,

Sasso²

2006

INQUIRY

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Adult daughters traditionally have served as primary caregivers for frail unmarried adults, but the levels of care they have provided in the past may interfere with their growing work responsibilities. This paper examines the impact of time transfers to elderly parents on labor supply at midlife. Using a sample of women ages 55 to 67 in the Health and Retirement Study, we estimate panel data models of annual hours of paid work controlling for the endogeneity of time assistance to parents. The results indicate that time help to parents strongly reduces female labor supply at midlife.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Elder Care on Women's Labor Supply

Johnson¹,

Sasso²

2006

INQUIRY

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“…Overall, a sizeable body of research now suggests that caregiving is associated with considerable burden, depression, and, in some cases, poor health (Schulz, Visintainer, & Williamson, 1990;Anthony-Bergstone, Zarit, & Gatz, 1988;George & Gwyther, 1986;Lawton, Brody, & Saperstein, 1989;Strawbridge, Wallhagen, Shema, & Kaplan, 1997). The vast majority of this literature, however, is based on nonrepresentative samples that most typically do not include a noncaregiver reference group.…”

Section: The Well-being Consequences Of Caregivingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does It Hurt to Care? Caregiving, Work-Family Conflict, and Midlife Well-Being

Marks¹

1998

Journal of Marriage and the Family

170

133

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“…Additional challenges to raising custodial grandchildren include inadequate support, social stigma, isolation, disrupted leisure and retirement plans, age-related adversities, anger toward grandchildren's parents, and financial strain (8)(9)(10). Thus custodial grandparents typically show elevated rates of anxiety, irritability, anger, and guilt (11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Such heightened psychological strain among parental figures is troubling because abundant research shows that psychological distress is associated with increased dysfunctional parenting, which, in turn, negatively affects children's psychological well-being (16).…”

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confidence: 99%

Risk of Psychological Difficulties Among Children Raised by Custodial Grandparents

Smith¹,

Palmieri²

2007

Psychiatric Services

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Objective-Although custodial grandchildren are believed to be at greater risk of emotional and behavioral problems than children in general, scant research has examined this important public health issue.Methods-This study involves data from 733 custodial grandmothers participating in a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health on custodial grandparenting and 9,878 caregivers from the 2001 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) who completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in reference to target children between ages four and 17. These two data sets were used to determine if custodial grandmothers report greater emotional and behavioral difficulties, as measured by the SDQ, for custodial grandchildren than do caregivers of children from the NHIS normative sample.Results-Custodial grandchildren fared worse than children from the NHIS sample across all domains measured by the SDQ subscales, regardless of the child's gender and whether reporters were recruited by population-based or convenience sampling methods. Comparisons within the sample of 733 custodial grandmothers showed that higher levels of difficulties were reported when grandmothers were caring for boys, were recruited by convenience versus population-based sampling, and were white. Comparisons of the banded scores computed for each SDQ subscale suggested that custodial grandchildren have different cutoff points than children in the general population for a likely diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder.Conclusions-Similar to other children in kinship care arrangements, custodial grandchildren are reported by their caregivers to have higher levels of behavioral and emotional disturbances than children in the overall U.S. population.Although increasing numbers of grandparents are becoming surrogate parents to grandchildren (1), little is known about how custodial grandchildren fare in these families. Yet there are two major reasons why custodial grandchildren may encounter greater risk of behavioral and emotional difficulties than children in general. One reason is that custodial grandchildren typically receive care from grandparents because of such predicaments among their parents as substance abuse, child abuse and neglect, teenage pregnancy, death, illness, divorce, incarceration, and HIV-AIDS (2). Such predicaments bear numerous risks of psychopathology among custodial grandchildren, including exposure to prenatal toxins, early childhood trauma,The authors report no competing interests.An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual scientific meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, November 16-20, 2006, Dallas. NIH Public Access Another reason why custodial grandchildren may experience higher risk of emotional and behavioral difficulties concerns the numerous challenges that grandparents face as caregivers. For many this role is developmentally off time, unplanned, ambiguous, and undertaken with considerable ambivalence (5-7). Additional challenges to raising custodial grandchildren in...

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New Burdens or More of the Same? Comparing Grandparent, Spouse, and Adult-Child Caregivers

Cited by 170 publications

References 25 publications

The Impact of Elder Care on Women's Labor Supply

The Impact of Elder Care on Women's Labor Supply

Does It Hurt to Care? Caregiving, Work-Family Conflict, and Midlife Well-Being

Risk of Psychological Difficulties Among Children Raised by Custodial Grandparents

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