PARENT CARE TRANSITIONS, MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS, AND HEALTH OUTCOMES -
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research uses a life course perspective to examine prospectively the short- and long-term impact of transitioning into the parent care role on the lives of adult offspring. Special emphasis is placed on studying the effects of such transitions on the quality and stability of the adult-child caregiver's marital relationship and the role of pre- and post-transition marital quality in regulating the relationship between the caregiving transition and subsequent psychological and physical health outcomes. Secondary data analyses on a national probability-based sample will be performed using three waves of data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The broad goals are 1) to examine the impact of the transition to parent care (caring for a parent or parent-in-law) on adult offspring's marital outcomes, psychological well-being, and physical health and 2) to evaluate simple and complex interrelationships among these variables following such a caregiving transition. The specific aims are: 1) to compare changes over time in marital outcomes (i.e., marital quality, marital stability), psychological well-being, and physical health across four groups of adult-children: those who transitioned into the parent care role over the course of the NSFH (recent caregivers and veteran caregivers), those who transitioned into and out of the caregiving role (former caregivers) and those that did not experience parent care transitions (noncaregiver controls); 2) to evaluate the extent to which pre-transition marital quality and changes in post-transition marital quality regulate the link between the transition to parent care and health-related caregiver outcomes and; 3) to examine the role of caregiver gender and social support as moderating variables in the link between the transition to parent care and health-related caregiver outcomes. Statistical analyses will include repeated-measures analysis of variance, mixed analysis of covariance, moderated regression analyses, and structural equation modeling. Relevance to public health: The proposed research will elucidate further the caregiving stress-outcome link by prospectively studying the impact of parent care transitions on the adult-child caregiver's marital quality and stability, psychological well-being, and physical health. A special focus of the study is to examine the extent to which pre-transition marital quality moderates and post-transition changes in marital quality mediate the effects of transitioning to the parent care role on detrimental psychological and physical health outcomes.
