Care of parents with dementia: comparison of caregiving sons and daughters

Background. In view of the demographic changes and the associated increasing need for care, the role of caregiving sons will also become more important; however, little is known about the caregiving experiences of sons. Objective. Potential differences between caregiving sons and daughters were investigated with respect to the style of caregiving, the feeling of stress and burden and the utilization of support offers. Material and methods. Baseline survey data from the interventional study Tele.TAnDem conducted from September 2012 to January 2014 were analyzed. From the total sample of 322 caregiving relatives of people suffering from dementia the participating sons (n = 17) were selected. For comparison 17 participants from the subsample of daughters (n = 111) were selected by propensity score matching. The analyses were conducted using t-tests, Mann-Whitney tests and chi(2)-tests. Results. The analyses regarding the style of caregiving, the feeling of stress and burden and the utilization of professional and informal assistance did not reach statistical significance. Daughters scored on average higher than sons only with respect to the acceptance of the caregiving situation (p < 0.05). Conclusion. Overall caregiving daughters and sons did not differ with respect to caregiving experiences as strongly as previously assumed. Perhaps earlier studies found more gender differences because caregiving sons compared to daughters already have different initial situations, which however remained uncontrolled.