Work-Family Conflicts of Older Women

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Proposed is a longitudinal examination of the ways in which concurrent caregiving and work responsibilities affect the physical health and psychological well-being of older Black and White women. The combination of a burgeoning population of disabled elders and an increasing number of older women in the labor force create the potential for both current and future cohorts of older women to experience concurrent roles that are in conflict with one another. By increasing our understanding of the work and family roles of older women, results from this study will help growing numbers of women to find fulfillment from both their work and caregiving roles. They will sensitize key decision makers within the business world to the critical issues faced by growing numbers of older women workers, and will provide policymakers with knowledge about the costs associated with these roles. The specific aims of this 5-year project are to: (1) contrast the experiences of a random sample of 390 Black and 390 White women who both provide care to a dependent older person and work and to examine the ways in which the contextual model developed by Dilworth-Anderson et al. (1999) explains similarities and differences in the experiences of these women; (2) build and test the explanatory power of a cross-sectional mode] in which characteristics of work and family predict role conflict, role distress, work costs, psychological well-being, and physical health of older women; (3) examine longitudinally the reciprocal relationship between work-caregiving conflict and caregiving-work conflict; (4) determine the ways in which conflict from work and caregiving impact distress, work costs, psychological well-being, and physical health over time; and (5) contrast the work costs, psychological well-being, and physical health of older women who, over time: (a) continue to work and provide care to a disabled older person, (b) leave the work force and continue to provide care, and (c) stop providing care and continue to work.