THE ROLES OF GENDER AND MOTHERS’ CARE PREFERENCES IN THE IMPACT OF CAREGIVING ON ADULT CHILDREN’S MARITAL QUALITY

Abstract

Adult children often incur a wide array of psychological, personal and interpersonal costs when caring for parents in later life, including to their marital relationships. These costs are moderated by many factors, including characteristics of the parent, the child, and the caregiver’s spouse. One potentially important moderator that has not been considered is the role of children’s perceptions of whether they are their parents’ preferred caregivers. In this paper, we used mixed-method data collected from 506 adult children as part of the Within-Family Differences Study-II to explore how gender and perceptions of mothers’ caregiving preferences interacted to affect marital tension. Multi-level modeling revealed that among daughters, but not sons, marital tension was lower when spouses perceived that they were their mothers’ preferred caregivers. Qualitative analyses suggested this occurred because husbands were more understanding of their wives’ heavy caregiving responsibilities when they perceived their wives were motivated by their mothers’ needs.