Spouses, Adult Children, and Children-in-Law as Caregivers of Older Adults: A Meta-Analytic Comparison

Key findings used in wiki

• Meta-analysis integrating 168 empirical studies comparing spousal caregivers, adult-child caregivers, and children-in-law caregivers of older adults.
• Spouse caregivers provide more direct support/care hours than adult-child caregivers, but report fewer care-recipient behavior problems.
• Compared with adult-child caregivers, spouse caregivers report more depression symptoms, greater financial and physical burden, and lower psychological well-being.
• The higher psychological distress among spouses is explained mostly — but not completely — by the higher level of care provision (intensity/hours) that spouses tend to take on, largely because of co-residence and absence of a built-in backup caregiver.
• Few differences emerge between adult children and children-in-law as a group, though children-in-law perceive the relationship with the care recipient as less positive and report fewer of the positive "uplifts" of caregiving.