PARENTS AS CAREGIVERS: CARING FOR CHILDREN WITH HEALTH PROBLEMS.

This paper explores a number of questions about the experience of psychological distress among parents of children with different health problems. Within the context of a stress process formulation, results from secondary analyses of data from two independent case-control studies are presented. The first is a study of parents whose children are in remission from cancer while the second focuses on parents whose children have developmental difficulties like infantile autism or Down syndrome. The results suggest that caring for children with health problems is associated with elevated levels of distress only in certain circumstances. The burden of caregiving appears to affect mothers more than fathers and is more apparent among parents of children with autism or Down syndrome than among parents whose children have cancer. This is attributed to the greater strains experienced by these women in the daily care of children with developmental problems. The results also indicate that chronic strains, stressful life events, and experienced social support affect parental distress in ways that are largely consistent with stress process conceptualizations. Throughout this paper, the findings are linked with recent conceptual and methodological developments in the study of emotional distress and suggest directions for future research.