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Abstract
The object of the present study was to examine the emotional burden of informal primary caregivers to the elderly. This study of emotional burden analyzed a national sample of 853 primary caregivers from the Informal Caregivers Survey, a component of the 1989 National Long-Term Care Survey. Results of the analysis indicate that the most salient indicators of emotional burden include the direct effects of the interaction between race and gender as well as the caregivers' health, available help, and specific factors that define the day-to-day caregiving experience. Indirectly affecting burden are the structural factors of coresidence and relationship to the elder.
Results of this study suggest differences in emotional burden at identical levels of objective burden. Most informal caregivers are women, and although white and black women face similar caregiving situations, black women report significantly less emotional burden than white women or men of either race at the same level of work. Therefore, the differences are more complex than simply those caregivers who perform the most work report the most emotional burden. Because black male caregivers report a higher level of emotional burden, the process of forming role identities apparently has gender differences confounded with cultural ones.
From a symbolic interaction perspective, people assuming the caregiving role probably negotiate a particular level of work load that they feel is appropriate, and then feel burdened when caregiving requires them to do more than they bargained for. One might conclude that black women are probably performing the amount of caregiving work that they negotiated, while black men and white women may be performing more than they anticipated.
