IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v74y2019i2p339-352..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluative and Experienced Well-being of Caregivers of Parents and Caregivers of Children

Author

Listed:
  • Anna M Hammersmith
  • I-Fen Lin

Abstract

Objectives Informal caregiving is an important source of support for aging parents and children. Yet the timing and nature of caring for parents versus children may result in different levels of well-being. Despite extensive studies on the well-being of caregivers of parents and of children, it remains elusive as to how evaluative and experienced well-being vary by caregiver type. Method Using data from the 2012 and 2013 rounds of the American Time Use Survey, we examined how 216 caregivers of parents and 1,989 caregivers of children reported their evaluative well-being (life satisfaction) and experienced well-being (happiness, meaning, pain, sadness, stress, and tiredness). Results Caregivers of parents reported lower evaluative and experienced well-being than caregivers of children. The association between caregiver type and life satisfaction dissipated, whereas the associations of caregiver type with happiness, meaning, and sadness persisted after accounting for caregivers’ demographic characteristics, socioeconomic resources, and time intensity. Discussion Experienced well-being appears to be more sensitive than evaluative well-being in detecting differences in well-being between these two types of caregivers. Given that the caregivers of parents do not receive the same level of institutional support as caregivers of children, social policies should aim to provide caregivers of parents with additional support.

Suggested Citation

  • Anna M Hammersmith & I-Fen Lin, 2019. "Evaluative and Experienced Well-being of Caregivers of Parents and Caregivers of Children," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 74(2), pages 339-352.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:74:y:2019:i:2:p:339-352.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbw065
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yakita, Akira, 2023. "Elderly long-term care policy and sandwich caregivers’ time allocation between child-rearing and market labor," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    2. Denys Dukhovnov & Joan M. Ryan & Emilio Zagheni, 2022. "“The Impact of Demographic Change on Transfers of Care and Associated Well-being”," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(6), pages 2419-2446, December.
    3. Tanima Ahmed & Maria S. Floro, 2024. "Unpaid Care to Older Persons and Tradeoffs in Time Use: The Experience of Working-Age Women and Men in the US," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 71-87, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:74:y:2019:i:2:p:339-352.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.