Caring for the Disabled: Applying Different Theoretical Perspectives to Understand Racial and Ethnic Variations Among Families

Abstract

Families often provide care for disabled relatives, yet this can affect caregivers negatively. To understand how disability affects the entire family, this article reviews four theories that can be used to understand caregiving and applies each theory to understand racial and ethnic variations among families. We examine the stress process model, social ecological perspective, life course perspective, and gender role socialization hypothesis, which are useful to understand caregiver burden.

KEYWORDS:

• caregiving
• disability
• ethnicity
• family
• race
• theory

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank two research assistants at the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), Libby Yost and Tim Hale, for assistance on this project, as well as an anonymous reviewer. We also thank the UAB Faculty Development Grant Program awarded to Patricia Drentea.

Notes

¹Research by Kaplan and Boss (1999) supports the idea that institutionalizing a spouse can lead to depression, because there is greater boundary ambiguity (i.e., the noninstitutionalized spouse is not sure of the status of the marriage). This is especially true in the case of Alzheimer's disease where the spouse can be both psychologically and physically absent.