A guiding hypothesis of gerontological research on caregiving burdens and stress is
that caregiver stress and satisfaction are negatively related. I explored this hypothesis using a subsample of adult child caregivers from the 1982 National Long Term
Care Survey. Contrary to expectation, I found a positive zero-order correlation
between stress and satisfaction. Demographic characteristics of the caregiver, level
of parental impairment, level of care provided, and caregiving problems explain 25%
of the variance in perceived stress but only 5% of the variance in satisfaction. Adult
children most involved in the caregiving experience report both high stress and high
satisfaction.
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