Study: Caregiving Can Ruin Adult Child-Parent Relationships
Whether you're a caregiver by profession or you're looking after a loved one, we have always said that caregiving is not only challenging and often thankless work, but can be emotionally and physically taxing. According to a previous post about caregiver health, caregivers are more likely to suffer from health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure and depression than their co-workers. And now, a new study is revealing the impact of caregiving on family relations.
According to a 2010 study Silverstein authored in the Journal of Marriage and Family (as cited in a recent AARP Bulletin), the relationship between adult children and aging parents is much more likely to be disharmonious here than in Europe or Israel. In Silverstein's study, 20 percent of Americans rated their parental relationships as disharmonious — more than twice the rate found in England, Germany, Norway, Spain and Israel.
"There seems to be more conflict, and less closeness, when [adult children] were caregiving or when the parent was frail," says Silverstein. For instance, the study compared older people's ability to climb stairs with the quality of the parent-child relationship. Parents who had problems with mobility — a measure of frailty — were more likely to report a disharmonious relationship with their adult children.
So what can be done for the adult children out there who are resentful? What can those who feel that they are being robbed of their Golden Years do to alleviate the situation? Share your thoughts and we'll post them in a follow-up entry!