Appraisals of Self in the Caregiver Role as Made by Married Custodial Grandparents

• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Author: Gregory C. Smith,Jeongeun Lee
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12451

G C. SKent State University

J LIowa State University

Appraisals of Self in the Caregiver Role as Made by

Married Custodial Grandparents

Objective: We examined how married custodial

grandparents from the same household appraise

the impact of caring for a grandchild on their

sense of self, and how these appraisals are

related to their psychological well-being.

Background: This study is important because

there is scant information on how custodial

grandmothers and grandfathers both experience

their caregiver role, even though 70% of these

grandparents are married.

Method: Four competing measurement and

structural models from the combined per-

spectives of the stress process model and the

two-factor model of caregivers’ psychologi-

cal well-being were tested with 193 married

grandmothers and grandfathers.

Results: The best tting model was one in which

two positive (personal gain and satisfaction)

and two negative (loss of self and role captiv-

ity) appraisals emerged as distinct rst-order

constructs. Both negative appraisals correlated

highest with negative affect, and both posi-

tive appraisals correlated highest with positive

affect. The measurement and structural compo-

nents of this model were largely invariant by

grandparent gender. Mean comparisons showed

that grandmothers reported signicantly higher

144 Nixson Hall, School of Lifespan Development and

Educational Sciences, College of Education, Health and

Human Services, Kent State University, Kent OH 44242

(gsmith2@kent.edu).

Key Words: caregiving appraisal, custodial grandparents,

psychological outcomes, role appraisals.

negative appraisals than grandfathers, with the

latter reporting signicantly greater perceived

gain in the caregiving role. Bivariate corre-

lations between grandmothers’ and grandfa-

thers’ appraisals were nonsignicant for per-

ceived gain and loss of self and of only moder-

ate magnitude for caregiversatisfaction and role

captivity.

Conclusions: Given that appraisals are a core

component of coping with stressors, our ndings

have important practice implications and point

to meaningful directions for future research

regarding custodial grandparent families.

Interest in custodial grandparent families,

dened as families where grandparents provide

full-time care without signicant involvement

by grandchildren’s biological parents, has

soared over the past quarter century (for review,

see Hayslip, Fruhauf, & Dolbin-MacNab,

2017). The most common reasons for these non-

normative care arrangements involve adverse

events that lead to parental absence or inability

to parent (e.g., substance abuse, child neglect,

incarceration, physical and mental illness). Stud-

ies using large national samples have provided

substantial evidence of risk for psychologi-

cal difculties among custodial grandmothers

(CGM; Minkler, Fuller-Thomson, Miller, &

Driver, 1997; Strawbridge, Wallhagen, Shema,

& Kaplan, 1997; Szinovacz, DeViney, & Atkin-

son, 1999) who provide the bulk of care within

these families. Although more than 70% of

Family Relations 70 (February 2021): 179–194179

DOI:10.1111/fare.12451

180 Family Relations

FIGURE 1. C M  N  P A  S   C G.

custodial grandparents (CGPs) are married

(Kreider, & Ellis, 2011), scant research has

focused the caregiving experiences of custodial

grandfathers (CGFs), and there has been even

less emphasis on how CGPs married to each

other experience caring for a grandchild. To

address these gaps in the literature, the present

study examines how married CGMs and CGFs

from the same household appraise the role of

caring for their custodial grandchild and how

these appraisals are related to their overall

psychological well-being.

Given that CGPs nd caregiving to be both

stressful and rewarding (Giarrusso, Silverstein,

& Feng, 1999; Hayslip & Kaminski, 2005), our

rst aim was to test and compare four mod-

els (see Figure1) that are based conceptually

on both the two-factor model of caregiving

appraisal and psychological well-being (Law-

ton, Moss, Kleban, Glicksman, & Rovine,

1991) and the stress process model of fam-

ily caregiving (Pearlin, Mullan, Semple, &

Skaff, 1990). The second aim was to test

whether the measurement and structural aspects

of the best tting model arising from these

comparisons are equivalent by CGP gender.

The nal aim was to examine the means and

zero-order correlations observed for CGMs