A qualitative study was done to investigate how adult children become caregivers to older parents with functional impairments and what roles their own children adopt in their family's care arrangements. In‐depth interviews with 43 members of 15 families revealed 5 influences on children and grandchildren's adoption of caregiver roles: expectations, family rules, religious training, role modeling and role making. Further analysis of families with grandchild participants showed considerable variation both between and within families in how and what kinds of eldercare roles were adopted. These results can be used by family life educators interested in creating parent‐care education programs.
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Piercy et al. (2001) studied this question.