Heather Sheffer, Utah State University
Family Consumer and Human Development
Background:
The Stress Process Model (Pearlin, 1990), suggests that caring for a person with dementia (PWD) can be stressful. Sources of stress include family conflict over the caregiving role and balancing care demands with other family role responsibilities. We expect that offspring caregivers experience more family conflict and have greater care responsibilities for other family members as compared to spouse caregivers. We explore associations between kin type (spouse vs. adult offspring) and these different stressors.
Methods:
Caregivers were enrolled in two interventions provided by the Alzheimer’s Association Utah Chapter. Analyses utilized baseline, pre-intervention data, and were limited to spouses of the PWD (N=118; 72.8%) and adult offspring (N=37; 22.8%). Caregivers reported amounts of family conflict (Pearlin, 1990), and the types of people they care for in addition to the PWD, summed so that higher scores indicate greater care responsibilities.
Results:
Independent samples t-tests revealed that offspring caregivers reported significantly more family conflict and higher amounts of additional care responsibilities than spousal caregivers. Linear regression models suggested that increased responsibilities for others did not mediate associations between kin type and family conflict, and that the relationship between kin type and family conflict remains statistically significant after controlling for additional care responsibilities.
Conclusions:
Knowledge that adult offspring and spousal caregivers have different exposure to stressors suggests that caregiver interventions may emphasize different strategies for helping spouses and adult offspring.