AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND WHITE MOTHERS OF ADULTS WITH CHRONIC DISABILITIES - CAREGIVING BURDEN AND SATISFACTION

A model is developed and tested that explains the effects of race on t he caregiving experience by patterning relationships between race and several causal agents. Data from 741 White and 100 African American wo men with adult children having chronic disabilities revealed that whil e the African American and White subsamples differed from one another in terms of age, education, income, living arrangements, physical heal th, caregiving burden, and caregiving satisfaction, race had no direct or indirect influence on either caregiving burden or caregiving satis faction. Rather, variables representing the sociocultural, interperson al, situational, temporal, and personal contexts which relate to race explained the observed variance in both caregiving burden and caregivi ng satisfaction.