Gender and Caregiving: a Study Among Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White Frail Elders

As the number of elderly people increases, the need for care of frail elders also rises. When looking at elder care, feminist scholars have pointed to the need to consider not only the caregiver's gender, but also the interlocking power relations of gender and raceethnicity. For these reasons, this study addresses the following question: how does raceethnicity influence the relationship of gender and care of frail elders? Analysis of data on Hispanic (N=182) and non-Hispanic White (N=1252) frail elders, and their caregiver spouses (N=74 and N=742, respectively) and children (N=150 and N=654, respectively) taken from a study of a nationally representative sample of noninstitutionalzed elders (AHEAD), reveals that women (wives and daughters) are more likely than men (husbands and sons) to be the caregivers of Hispanic and of non-Hispanic White elders. With respect to the type of tasks involved in caregiving, the study shows that among non-Hispanic White elders, husbands are indeed involved in the personal care of their wives, and that daughters are more likely than sons to provide assistance with these tasks. Among Hispanic elders, husbands are more likely than wives to help with managing money. The study also reveals that daughters spend more total hours caring for their frail elders than sons do. Importantly, this study shows that daughters of Hispanic elders provide about 1.5 times more hours per week of care to their parents than daughters of non-Hispanic White elders. I also examined how the caregiver's gender interacts with their work status, marital status and number of children to affect the amount of time spent in caregiving, but did not find any significant relationships.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Department dc:contributor.department

Sociology

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2001

Author dc:creator

• Almada, Alicia Zulema

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Calasanti, Toni M.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• de Wolf, Peggy L.
• Fuller, Theodore D.

• caregiving
• non-Hispanic Whites
• elders
• Hispanics
• Gender

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-06162001-141734

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/33603