UC Santa Barbara

The demands for informal caregiving have risen significantly (Reinhard et al., 2023), leading many adult caregivers and their siblings to cope together while providing care for their parents with medical conditions (Kullgren et al., 2022). Communal coping (CC) occurs when family caregivers jointly identify the stressor of caregiving as shared and work with each other to manage caregiving responsibilities as a team (Afifi et al., 2020). Although enacting CC among family members should help to manage parental care needs more effectively, a history of maltreatment among family members can complicate this coping process. Yet, little research to date has explored how adult caregivers’ family history impacts CC amid caregiving to shape well-being outcomes.

The present mixed-methods study examined the role of family history when adult caregivers engage in CC with their siblings to support their ill parent. Testing a hypothesized model using a survey (N = 776), study one examined how adult caregivers’ perceptions of childhood parental favoritism toward siblings, unresolved childhood hurt toward their siblings, and family functioning in childhood (i.e., indicators of family history) predict CC engagement with siblings, which, in turn, associates with caregiver burden, resentment toward siblings, and flourishing (i.e., well-being outcomes), while taking into account the moderating effects of felt obligation and family resources. The results revealed that adult caregivers’ CC engagement with siblings mediated the associations between their family history and caregiver burden, sibling resentment, and flourishing, with high family resources making the indirect associations with flourishing stronger. Some results were in the opposite direction of the hypothesized model, such as the positive associations between both childhood favoritism toward siblings and unresolved childhood hurt toward siblings and CC engagement with siblings, casting potential light on the situational pressure to cope with hurt-inflicting siblings or those who were more favored by their parent during childhood.

In interviewing those who deal with financial hardship (N = 30), study two investigated why adult caregivers enact CC with siblings (despite complications from family history), and how childhood favoritism, unresolved childhood hurt, and family resources shape CC engagement with siblings amid caregiving. The findings highlight that, despite a family history of favoritism and unresolved hurt, both favored and disfavored adult caregivers’ engaged in CC with siblings out of a felt obligation to their ill parent. In addition, the findings suggest that unresolved childhood hurt between adult caregivers and their siblings impeded CC through heightened conflict and arguments, which, at times, made CC ineffective or dysfunctional. Family resources (i.e., financial, social, emotional, and instrumental support), when shared between caregivers in the family network, allowed for greater CC to lessen caregiver burden. The withholding of resources by siblings, however, made adult caregivers feel more resentment toward siblings and caregiver burden.

Ultimately, this dissertation sheds light on the salient role family history plays during caregiving and end-of-life processes, underscoring that childhood experiences may have an enduring effect on how adult caregivers enact CC with siblings decades later, especially if family issues are left unaddressed and buried in the past. This study highlights the need for practitioners (i.e., social workers, medical professionals) to emphasize adult caregivers’ agency when deciding to provide care with family caregivers, considering a history of familial maltreatment. Moreover, the study underscores that future caregiver interventions must be developed using a trauma-informed approach at the family level in which practitioners attempt to carefully detect behavioral cues among family members that signal a history of familial maltreatment. While the phrase “family is forever” is contestable, this study highlights how unaddressed issues buried in family history can resurface on the grounds of caregiving to impede CC engagement among family caregivers.