Effects of parent-care transitions on adult sons' and daughters' marital relationships

We examined the impact of transitioning into and/or out of the parent-care role on marital quality over a 15-year period using data from the US National Survey of Families and Households. Using 3-way mixed-MANCOVAs(controlling for sociodemographic variables), we compared four groups of adult women and men varying on parent-care
transition experiences (recent-caregivers, veteran-caregivers, former-caregivers, and non-caregivers) over time on three marital quality indicators (marital happiness, marital disagreement, and estimates of expected impact on quality of life [EQOL] if separated from spouse). We found that veteran-caregivers reported significantly less marital happiness than recent-caregivers. For EQOL if separated, we obtained a significant caregiving-transition group X gender interaction. Follow-up simple-effects tests indicated that among recent and veteran caregivers, women expected their lives to be significantly more negatively impacted if marital separation were to occur than did men. A similar but much weaker gender difference was observed among non-caregivers; among former caregivers, however,men and women did not vary on EQOL. The impact of parent-care transitions on marriage appear to vary along the caregiving career trajectory.

Title	Effects of parent-care transitions on adult sons' and daughters' marital relationships
Creator	Newsom, J. T.
	Pasternak, C.
	Bookwala, Jamila
	Pruchno, R.
Publisher	Generations of relationships and relationships across generations: Conference proceedings of the combined 7th annual APS PORIG conference/IARR Mini-Conference
Academic Department	Psychology
Division	Social Sciences
Organization	Lafayette College
Date Issued	2007
Date Available	2013-04-29T13:49:41Z
Type	Article
Language	English
Bibliographic Citation	Bookwala, J., et al. (2007) "Effects of parent-care transitions on adult sons' and daughters' marital relationships." In Z. J. Pearce (Ed.), Generations of relationships and relationships across generations: Conference proceedings of the combined 7th annual APS PORIG conference/IARR Mini-Conference (pp. 13-18). Melbourne, Australia: Australian Psychological Society.
Standard Identifier	Handle 10385/1214
Permalink	http://hdl.handle.net/10385/1214
Rights Statement	In Copyright
Rights Holders	Australian Psychological Society