Children-in-Law in Caregiving Families

Data were collected from 252 coresident caregiving daughters and daughters-in-law and their husbands. We hypothesized that biological children would give more care than children-in-law and that children-in-law would have very different caregiving experiences and resultant appraisals than biological children. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found that the experiences are very similar for biological children and children-in-law in caregiving families. We suggested that the important factor is not the relationship to the elder that has the impact--it is the quality of the relationship with the elder that is consistently significant.