Caregiver Well-Being: Intersections of Relationship and Gender

We know much about caregiving women compared with caregiving men and caregiving spouses compared with caregiving adult children. We know less about the intersections of relationship and gender. This article explores this intersection through the well-being (burden and self-esteem) of caregivers to family members with dementia. Throughout British Columbia, Canada, 873 caregivers were interviewed in person for on average, over 1½ hours. The results reveal that daughters experience the highest burden but also the highest self-esteem, suggesting the role is less salient for their self-identities. Wives emerge as the most vulnerable of the four groups when both burden and self-esteem are considered. The data confirm the usefulness of the intersectionality framework for understanding co-occupancy of more than one status and indicate that positive cognitive well-being and negative affective well-being can be differentially related. Multivariate analyses confirm the importance of caregiver, not patient, characteristics for burden and self-esteem.