Marital Status of Daughters and Patterns of Parent Care

Abstract

Patterns of help to disabled elderly parents from family and paid sources are examined as they vary among five groups of parent-caring daughters: married (n = 234), remarried (n = 56), separated/divorced (n = 91), widowed (n = 52), and never married (n = 59). Parents of all groups received similar total amounts of care from all sources combined, with daughters providing at least half of the care themselves. Never-married daughters, followed by the widowed, provided larger proportions of the total hours of care (77% and 62%) than the other three groups (p < .001). Married daughters had the most informal helpers (p < .001), and never marrieds more often were their parents' sole informal helpers (p < .01). Separated/divorced women who shared households used the highest proportions of paid care.