Daily Associations Between Caregiving Time and Spousal Caregivers' Well-Being: The Moderating Roles of Daily Marital...

With more individuals providing informal care, understanding the impacts of this role is crucial. The literature on the well-being of informal caregivers is divided, with some studies reporting primarily harmful effects and others concluding that caregiving is fundamentally beneficial. We examined how everyday positive and negative marital interactions moderated the association between spousal caregiving time and caregiver affect in both within and between-person processes, aiming to clarify mechanisms behind the varied outcomes observed in caregiver well-being.

As part of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, 212 spousal caregivers participated in the National Study of Daily Experiences, an 8-day daily-diary study, providing 1634 days of data. Generalized linear mixed models examined the moderating role of daily interaction quality in associations between daily caregiving time and daily positive and negative affect. Covariates included caregiver health, sex, employment, minority status, education, and time spent caring for people besides a spouse.

Both daily marital strain and uplifts significantly moderated the relationship between daily caregiving time and negative affect by reducing the association between increased care time and negative affect. Negative affect was already elevated on strain days, regardless of caregiving time. Conversely, daily marital strain and uplifts did not significantly moderate the association between caregiving time and positive affect.

Findings generally support the view that caregiving is predominantly linked with psychological burden while highlighting the potential role of daily marital uplifts in buffering this association.