Transitions to Caregiving, Gender, and Psychological Well‐Being: A Prospective U.S. National Study

Abstract

ࡗ Transitions to Caregiving, Gender, and Psychological Well-Being: A Prospective U.S. National Study Guided by a life course perspective, this study examined the effects of transitioning into caregiving activity for a child, spouse, parent, other relative, or nonkin associate on nine dimensions of psychological well-being. Data came from adults ages 19-95, who were noncaregiver primary respondents in the National Survey of Families and Households in 1987-88 and who were followed up longitudinally in 1992-93 ( N ϭ 8,286). Results from multivariate regression models confirmed that the transition to caregiving for primary kin (i.e., a child, spouse, or biological parent) was associated with an increase in depressive symptoms. However in selected instances, caregiving was associated with beneficial effects (e.g., women who began to provide nonresidential care to a biological parent reported more purpose in life than noncaregiving women). Evidence regarding gender differences was inconsistent, varying across caregiving role relationship types.

The informal caregiver's burden of dependent people: Theory and empirical review

“…Several authors have also appealed to the possibility of the existence of positive repercussions of care (Marks et al, 2002;Ló pez et al, 2005), where several investigations have indicated an increase of expertise and the feelings of satisfaction derived from caring for a dependent person as the two most relevant positive consequences.…”

Positive and negative evaluation of caregiving among three different types of informal care relationships

“…Whereas the current knowledge on care evaluation is mostly focused on spouses and adult children as caregivers (Kramer 1997a;Lawton et al 1991;Marks et al 2002;Pinquart and Sörensen 2011;Raschick and Ingersoll-Dayton 2004;Savundranayagam et al 2011), we added more insight into the characteristics of the group of other caregivers, a rather unexplored type of caregiver so far (cf Schulz et al 2012). In addition, the study explored the impact of many different types of correlates, which provided more insight in differential effects on burden and positive evaluation and the degree to which the caregiver stress model is applicable to both positive and negative care evaluation.…”

“…Due to their relatively low care intensity, a lower care burden can be expected compared to spouses and adult children. Marks et al (2002) stressed that for non-kin caregivers the choice to provide care is less guided by the normative obligations that mark spousal and parent-child relationships, and is based more on consideration of perceived opportunities and costs or on a strong bond that they have developed with the care recipient. Insofar as these other caregivers may feel less obliged to provide care, their sense of burden may be lower and sense of satisfaction may be higher.…”

“…For example, spouses tend to report not only greater burden but also more positive aspects of caregiving than adult children who provide care to their older parents (Lawton et al 1991;Rapp and Chao 2000;Tarlow et al 2004). Some studies show that the transition into the caregiving role is experienced more positively among non-kin caregivers than among spouses and adult children (Cohen et al 2002;Marks et al 2002). Such differences in caregiving evaluation may arise because spouses, adult children and other types of caregivers differ in the opportunities they have to provide care as well as in their motivation for caring (Lyonette and Yardley 2003;Pinquart and Sörensen 2011;Schulz et al 2012), both of which are important predictors of caregiver evaluation.…”

Social relationships, sleep quality, and interleukin-6 in aging women

“…A further possibility is that sleep quality mediates the association of social relations and plasma IL-6. Our analyses tested for both moderating and mediating influences (20).…”