Motivations to Care: Daughters- and Sons-in-Law Caring for Relatives with Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

Few studies have focused on caregiving daughters- and sons-in-law. In an exploratory, qualitative study of 16 daughters- and sons-in-law and their 16 spouses, 4 patterns emerged that highlighted differences in their motivation for involvement in caregiving. Differences related to notions of reactive versus pro-active involvement, managerial roles in family, and differences in impact of involvement for daughters- and sons-in-law. Caregiving for frail elderly relatives falls predominantly to women in family. Research has repeatedly shown that wives, daughters, and daughters-in-law provide bulk of care (Coward & Dwyer, 1990; Stone, Cafferata, & Sangl, 1987). Although husbands and sons are sometimes primary caregivers, frequently they defer to their daughters, wives, and sisters (Dwyer & Coward, 1991; Matthews & Rosner, 1988; Montgomery & Kamo, 1989). Family legacy, women's traditional family roles, taboos about providing personal care across genders, attachment in families, and cultural and have been found to influence spouses' and adult children's decisions about involvement in caregiving (Horowitz, 1985a). Most of research has centered on spouses' and children's experiences and little research has focused specifically on children-in-law. Little is known about whether children-inlaw construct their experiences in same way as children. Particularly, given that blood-tied filial attachment is not involved in in-law relationships, how children-in-law explain their decisions to become involved in caregiving? LITERATURE REVIEW Men and women fulfill their filial obligations differently (Horowitz, 1985b; Matthews & Rosner, 1988; Stoller, 1990; Stone, Cafferata, & Sangl, 1987). In exploring obligatory and discretionary motives for caregiving, Walker, Pratt, Shin, and Jones (1989) found that obligation, or sense of duty to provide care, was most frequently mentioned reason for caregiving by 72 daughters in their study, followed by moral beliefs or the right thing to do (p. 206). Understanding from previous research that caregiving sons did fewer caregiving tasks than daughters (Birkel& Jones, 1989; Coward, 1987; Horowitz, 1985b; Matthews & Rosner, 1988), Montgomery and Kamo (1989) examined sons' and daughters' feelings of obligation. They found that sons feel as obligated as daughters to provide care, even though they fewer actual tasks associated with caregiving and tend to assume more managerial roles. Obligation, commitment, norms, and responsibilities have proven to be entwined in complicated fashions in adult children's caregiving accounts (Blieszner & Mancini, 1987; Blieszner & Shifflett, 1989; Walker, Pratt, Shin, & Jones, 1990). Notions of obligation are contextual and vary according to relationship with parent or parent-inlaw. Finley, Roberts, and Banahan (1988) found that sons' and daughters' attitudes about their obligation were similar; however, their actions were different. They also found that affection motivated daughters more than it did sons to feel obligated to care for their parents and mothers-in-law (but not fathers-in-law). However, these researchers called for expanded work on in-laws, because variables that explained children's involvement rarely explained children-in-law involvement. There are few studies that have examined in-law relationships and notions of obligation and affection. In a rare study on daughters-in-law, Kivett (1989) focused on associational solidarity. A1though she found attachment between daughters-in-law and their mothers-inlaw, it was not driving motivation behind caregiving; rather, notions of obligation were emphasized. Caregiver burden has also been studied extensively in sons and daughters, with contradictory findings. Montgomery and Kamo (1989) found that sons and daughters did not report different levels of burden, which is not consistent with other studies that found that sons experienced less burden than daughters (Horowitz, 1985b). …