The Mexican American Caregiving Experience

Abstract

Although family caregiving among non-Hispanic Whites (NHW) has been studied extensively, relatively little is known about the caregiving experience in Mexican American (MA) families. This article compares 196 MA caregivers to 165 NHW caregivers and describes differences in the caregiving structure and caregiving experience. For caregiving structure, more MA caregivers were adult children even though the elder had a living spouse, MA caregivers provided less help, fewer MAs lived with elders, and MA elders had better functional abilities, in spite of having similar health problems to their NHW counterparts. For caregiving experience, MA caregivers had and used less social support, felt less social restriction and less change in elder-caregiver-family relationships, had poorer health, and evaluated their role performance better than NHW caregivers.