S. Cossette et al., INFORMAL AND FORMAL SUPPORT FOR CAREGIVERS OF A DEMENTED RELATIVE - DO GENDER AND KINSHIP MAKE A DIFFERENCE, Research in nursing & health, 18(5), 1995, pp. 437-451
Gender and kinship were examined with regard to caregivers' use of inf
ormal and formal support and to two models of support (substitution or
supplementation). Three groups of caregivers of a demented relative l
iving at home-husbands, wives, and adult daughters-were compared on me
asures of both informal and formal support. The gender hypothesis deal
s with the similarities among caregivers of the same gender with respe
ct to support. The kinship hypothesis refers to the similarities among
caregivers having the same kinship with the carereceiver. The gender
hypothesis was confirmed for informal informational support while the
kinship hypothesis was supported for informal conflictual support. For
most of the comparisons, the three groups of caregivers shared more s
imilarities than differences. The interchangeability between informal
and formal support seems to fall under the perspective of kinship beca
use the daughter group is the only one where a model of supplementatio
n was observed. (C) 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.