Mothers and daughters-in-law: a prospective study of informal care-giving arrangements and survival in Japan

BMC Geriatrics

Research Article

Hideto Takahashi¹  Masayo Kashiwagi²  Nanako Tamiya²  Akihiro Nishi³  Mikiya Sato⁴  Ichiro Kawachi⁵ 

[1] Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;Department of Health Services Research, Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;Department of Health Services Research, Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA;Department of Public Health, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan;Department of Health Services Research, Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;Tokyo Suginami Centre for Family Medicine, Kawakita General Hospital, Tokyo, Japan;Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA;

关键词: Informal Care;    Japanese Woman;    Psychological Abuse;    Care Recipient;    Leukocyte Telomere Length;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2318-10-61

 received in 2010-01-25, accepted in 2010-08-29,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDaughters-in-law have played an important role in informal care-giving arrangements within East Asian traditional norms. The aim of this study was to measure the impact of daughter-in-law care-giving on the survival of care recipients. We prospectively examined the associations between different types of kinship relationship between the main family caregiver and the care recipient in relation to survival among care recipients.MethodsA questionnaire was administered to Japanese community-dwelling seniors who were eligible to receive national long-term care insurance (LTCI) community-based services. Among 191 individuals whose informal care-giving arrangement was definitively determined, we observed 58 care recipients receiving care from spouses, 58 from daughters-in-law, 27 from biological daughters, 25 from other relatives, and 23 care recipients living alone.ResultsDuring 51 months of follow-up from December 2001, 68 care recipients died, 117 survived, and 6 moved. Hazard ratios of each care-giving arrangement were estimated by Cox proportional hazard models adjusted for care recipients' demographic factors, their care needs level based on their physical and cognitive functioning and their service use, caregivers' demographic factors, and household size. The highest risk of mortality was found for female elders receiving care from daughters-in-law (HR 4.15, 95% CI 1.02-16.90) followed by those receiving care from biological daughters (HR 1.64, 95% CI 0.37-7.21), compared to women receiving spousal care. By contrast, male elders receiving care from daughters-in-law tended to live longer than those receiving care from their spouses.ConclusionsOur finding suggests that there may be a survival "penalty" for older Japanese women who are cared for by their daughters-in-law.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Nishi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.