Caregiving Exacts Heavy Toll on Marriage and Career

A new survey finds about one-third of all caregivers who work outside the home and/or are married report their marriage and jobs are suffering because of their caregiving load.

The national survey of family caregivers by SeniorBridge Family, a provider of home-based eldercare services, placed the average weekly time spent caregiving at 10 hours. Other estimates have ranged to between 20 and 40 hours per week.

Reports of job performance suffering were found in 35% of the caregivers polled, while 30% said their marriage is suffering.

Most caregivers are time-starved and overwhelmed by the complexity of their caregiving responsibilities,” notes Larry Sosnow, Chief Executive Officer of SeniorBridge Family. “Fully 80% of the survey respondents work full-time outside the home and are juggling eldercare, childcare and job responsibilities. At the same time, many are caring for patients with increasingly serious physical and cognitive impairments – conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and debilitating arthritis, which are on the rise due to longer life expectancies.”

Despite their sacrifices, 48% of the caregivers surveyed lack confidence in the quality of their caregiving arrangements, according to the survey. An even higher percentage (64%) is dissatisfied or only marginally satisfied with the convenience of these arrangements. By point of comparison, only 29% of the survey respondents who rely on outside childcare services worry about the quality of their children’s care, and only 35% are dissatisfied with the convenience of these services.

While care recipients in the study receive, on average, 16 to 20 hours of care from all caregivers combined — paid and unpaid — nearly half (46%) of them believe more hours are needed but are not being provided.

Perhaps as a result of this shortfall, nearly half (44%) of the survey respondents report that care recipients have missed meals or suffered from poor nutritional intake, while an additional one-third (32%) have visited an emergency room or sustained injuries from an accident. And 22% have been alone at home when an emergency occurred.

“As the time demands and costs associated with eldercare escalate, many caregivers feel they have no choice than but to cut back on care and supervision,” says Sosnow. “The result, unfortunately, is a sharp increase in nutritional problems, injuries and drug noncompliance. All too often, there is no care coordinator in place who is responsible for ensuring a comprehensive and consistent level of caregiving.”

Among the survey’s other key findings:

High Anxiety: 41% of caregivers surveyed say they worry six or more times per week about the well-being of the person for whom they care, ahead of worries about their children (27%), job security (22%), retirement savings (23%), their partner’s health (17%), the stock market (17%), terrorism (12%) or their own health (10%). “Despite the fact that we’re at war and the economy is volatile, it is eldercare concerns that are keeping caregivers up at night,” notes Sosnow.

Sibling Issues – Cracks Emerge in the Ties That Bind: Although most (90%) of the caregivers surveyed indicate that they have siblings, few receive substantial help from them. Fully 60% indicate that their brothers and sisters do not provide significant caregiving support, and 31% believe that caregiving has fueled family tensions. Caregivers with all male siblings are less likely to receive support than those with a mix of male and female siblings (26% vs. 45%).

An Expensive Proposition: Among caregivers who currently employ paid full- or part-time help, nearly half (43%) spend more than $500 per week and 20% spend more than $1,000 per week on outside care. Most (65%) subsidize the cost of these services with the care recipient’s savings, while 52% reach into their own pockets to pay for care. Respondents who view themselves as primary caregivers (50%) are somewhat more likely to use the care recipient’s own insurance or savings to fund outside care than are supplemental caregivers (33%) or long-distance caregivers (37%).

Squeezed From all Sides: Caregivers rank “juggling caregiving with other work/personal commitments” as their number one problem, cited by 40% of respondents. Other major problems include “providing care from a distance” (30%), “dealing with other family members” (27%), “coordinating care among doctors, care providers and outside specialists” (27%) and “handling care recipients’ emotional problems” (25%). Men are slightly more concerned than women with “providing care from a distance” (35% vs. 25%), while women are more concerned than men with “coping with their own emotions of fear, anger and guilt” (25% vs. 16%) and “handling care recipients’ emotional problems” (28% vs. 22%).

Male Caregiving Comes of Age: Surprisingly, an almost equal percentage of men and women describe themselves as primary caregivers. More than one-third of men (36%) and women (34%) identify themselves as the main providers of care, while roughly the same percentage (36% of men and 31% of women) get help from one or more paid care providers. Nearly one in six men (14%) and women (15%) live at a distance and spend most of their time coordinating care. Overall, women spend slightly more time providing and coordinating care than men, with 24% of the women surveyed spending more than 10 hours per week on care, compared with 20% of men.

Mothering Our Mothers: While 22% of the caregivers surveyed are caring for their fathers, twice as many (44%) are caring for their mothers. Other recipients of care include grandparents (10%), friends (7%), aunts/uncles (4%), spouses (4%) and brothers/sisters (2%). Male caregivers are equally as likely to be caring for their mothers as female caregivers.

The SeniorBridge Family Caregiver Study was conducted by an online research firm during April 2004. The survey polled 514 adult caregivers across the United States who currently spend (or recently spent) more than two hours per week caring for an aging friend or relative and have total annual household income of at least $100,000. While all of the caregivers surveyed provide or coordinate home-based care, 22% reside with the care recipient, 32% live within 10 miles of the care recipient’s home and 14% live more than 200 miles away. Roughly one-quarter (27%) of the respondents live more than 30 miles from the patients for whom they care.