Extra Caregiving Demands, Work-Role Salience, and Psychological Distress Among Employed Parents

Deniz Yucel () and Beth Latshaw ()
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Deniz Yucel: William Paterson University
Beth Latshaw: Department of Sociology at Widener University

Applied Research in Quality of Life, 2025, vol. 20, issue 1, No 17, 347-368

Abstract: Abstract We study the association between caregiving demands and psychological distress using data on 538 employed parents in the United States from the 2016 wave of the National Study of the Changing Workforce. Despite prior evidence on the relationship between caregiving demands and psychological distress, less is known about what type of caregiving demands matter, and under what conditions these demands matter. With that in mind, this study extends prior research by considering elder care, along with different types of child care (such as typical and exceptional child care), into the discussion of caregiving demands and its relationship with psychological distress. Moreover, we test whether this association is moderated by employed parents’ level of work-role salience. Results show that working parents with exceptional child care demands and those with both elder care and child care demands (i.e., sandwich generation care demands) report higher levels of psychological distress than do those with only typical child care demands. In addition, work-role salience moderates the association between having sandwich generation care demands and psychological distress. Further, the moderating effect of work-role salience is significantly stronger for working mothers than for working fathers.

Keywords: Caregiving; Work-role salience; Psychological distress; Employed parents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s11482-024-10415-9

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