The Costs of Caring: Caregiver Strain and Work-Family Conflict Among Canadian Workers

Paul Glavin () and Amanda Peters

Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2015, vol. 36, issue 1, 5-20

Abstract: We analyzed survey data from a nationally representative study of Canadian labor force participants (n = 5,667) to examine the social distribution and mental health of those who provide unpaid health-related care to a family member or relative. As part of these analyses, we investigated gender differences in the association between caregiving frequency and mental health. Multivariate analyses revealed evidence that women caregivers experienced greater health penalties than men with care commitments. Mediation analyses further indicated that work-family conflict fully explained the caregiver strain experienced by men, while it only partially accounted for caregiver strain among women. These results extend previous research that has documented differences in the duties and experiences of men and women caregivers. We discuss direct empathetic crossover as a potential contributory factor for women’s caregiving strain. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Caregiving; Mental health; Work-family conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10834-014-9423-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jfamec:v:36:y:2015:i:1:p:5-20

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/10834/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10834-014-9423-2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Family and Economic Issues is currently edited by Joyce Serido

More articles in Journal of Family and Economic Issues from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().