Children-in-law in caregiving families

Data were collected from 252 coresident caregiving daughters and daughters- in-law and their husbands. We hypothesized that biological children would g ive more care than children-in-law and that children-in-law would have very different caregiving experiences and resultant appraisals than biological children. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found that the experiences are ver y similar for biological children and children-in-law in caregiving familie s. We suggested that the important factor is not the relationship to the el der that has the impact-it is the quality of the relationship with the elde r that is consistently significant.