Journal of Gerontology: SOCIAL SCIENCES
2008, Vol. 63B, No. 3, S154–S161

Copyright 2008 by The Gerontological Society of America

Routine Assistance to Parents: Effects on
Daily Mood and Other Stressors
Jyoti Savla,1 David M. Almeida,2 Adam Davey,3 and Steven H. Zarit2
1

Department of Human Development and Center for Gerontology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia.
2
Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
3
College of Health Professions, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Objectives. The present study examined the association of providing assistance to older parents amid everyday
circumstances and short-term psychological consequences for adult children providing assistance.
Methods. We explored this association using 824 daily diary interviews of 119 adult children providing assistance in
the National Study of Daily Experiences by using a left-censored random effects tobit regression model that accounted for
the clustered data and floor effects in reported psychological distress.
Results. Psychological distress was higher on days adult children provided assistance to their parent (b ¼ 0.88, p , .05)
even after we controlled for situational variables such as time spent on daily paid work, time spent on leisure activities, and
assistance provided to individuals other than parents. Demographic and psychosocial variables such as having resident
children (b ¼ 2.14, p , .01), less education (b ¼À0.54, p , .05), and neuroticism (b ¼ 2.08, p , .05), also predicted daily
psychological distress.
Discussion. Even after we controlled for within-person (daily situational variables) and between-person factors
(background characteristics), the act of providing assistance itself had immediate associations with daily mood for helpers,
particularly for those with fewer resources and greater demands on time. Feasibility and success of programs that provide
respite and relief services to older adults and their children should be assessed in light of daily living.
Key Words: Routine assistance—Daily diary—Stress proliferation—Caregiving.

V

ARIATION in assistance between adult children and their
older parents has emerged as an important topic in social
gerontology (e.g., Davey, Janke, & Savla, 2005; Pillemer &
Suitor, 2006). Whereas studies of continuous care to chronically ill family members can contribute to researchers’ general
understanding of care-related stress and its psychological
consequences on the younger generations providing assistance,
most of these studies are specific to certain types of care
experiences (e.g., for Alzheimer’s patients, stroke patients) and
focus on intense caregiving. This focus has provided an
important, but limited, perspective on the range of possible
outcomes (Ory, Hoffman, Yee, Tennstedt, & Schulz, 1999).
There is growing recognition that family members are involved
in a range of activities: from infrequent to daily provision and
from casual routine assistance to very intensive care for family
members that could still affect the daily lives of people
providing assistance (e.g., Szinovacz & Davey, 2007).
Furthermore, a preponderance of the literature has relied on
retrospective accounts of assistance that are often collected over
a relatively long period of time, covering weeks, months, and
years. As a result, these accounts are likely to be confounded by
other events that happened during the time period. This study
examined the more immediate impact of routine assistance
against the context of daily living and its cumulative effects
over time for adult children providing assistance.
Understanding of daily stressors and their immediate and
cumulative influence over time has benefited from developments in daily diary designs in which repeated measures are
collected from individuals during their daily lives (Almeida,

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2005; Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003). In this design,
individuals reported regarding a number of everyday events,
behaviors, symptoms, and emotional states to capture the
ongoing experiences in the natural context of daily living
(Larson & Almeida, 1999). Unlike traditional designs that
require respondents to recall experiences over long time frames,
this design alleviates memory distortions, especially those
related to current emotional state, and improves accuracy of
recall. But the most valuable feature of diary methods is that
they allow assessment of within-person processes and permit
researchers to shift their focus from considering mean levels of
stressors and well-being in a group of individuals to charting
the day-to-day fluctuations in stress and well-being within an
individual himself or herself (Reis & Gable, 2000). Because
individuals serve as their own controls, investigators can now
examine how daily provision of assistance to a parent is
associated with changes in individuals’ own well-being from
one day to the next. For example, research has suggested that
competing roles may increase psychological distress among
caregivers (e.g., Murphy et al., 1997). Most of these studies
have used a between-person design, comparing one caregiver to
another. These studies could be confounded by within-person
differences, such as amount of time spent on competing roles or
experience of poor health or physical ailment on a day when
assistance is provided. In contrast, in the present study, we were
able to test whether psychological distress is higher on days
when adult children provide assistance than on days they do
not. Similarly, between-person designs have found that higher
education may buffer helpers from psychological distress. Our

ROUTINE ASSISTANCE TO PARENTS

within-person design, however, allowed us to determine the
buffering effect of education on a day when assistance is
provided versus one when it is not, as well as to compare helpers
on other potentially important background characteristics.

Stress Proliferation on Everyday Living
Providing routine assistance to an older parent has salient
psychological consequences such as increased distress and
burden for the adult child providing help (e.g., Aneshensel,
Pearlin, Mullan, Zarit, & Whitlatch, 1995; Antonucci, Akiyama,
& Lansford, 1998; Marks, 1998; Walen & Lachman, 2000).
Many researchers believe that this distress and burden is partly
due to the impingement of the helping role on other everyday
roles and experiences, which makes up the structural underpinning of stress spillover or proliferation (Pearlin, 1989;
Pearlin, Aneshensel, & LeBlanc, 1997). According to the stress
process model (Aneshensel et al., 1995), individuals bear
multiple social roles; for instance, they may simultaneously be
breadwinners, parents, employees or employers, members of
voluntary organization, and so forth. Each of these roles imposes
time commitments, responsibilities, and obligations. Many of
these roles have been a part of the daily plan of an individual for
a long time and have been accommodated into the flow of daily
living. The helping role emerges after these primary roles have
already been acclimatized (Pearlin, Mullan, Semple, & Skaff,
1990). Initially, the demands of providing routine assistance to
a parent may be minimal and sporadic; however, they can
continue to grow over time, making reordering of priorities and
reallocating energies increasingly difficult. It is this feature of the
helping role that contributes to stress proliferation, wherein the
new role imposes demands on one’s time and energy and
requires restructuring and juggling of the primary roles in daily
life, making it particularly challenging and eventually undermining the health and well-being of the individual providing
routine assistance to parents (Pearlin, 1989).
Extant research supporting this theory has found that whether
providing help is situation specific and occasional or repetitive
and chronic, it is still powerful enough to disrupt an array of
roles, activities, and relationships that are only proximally related
to the helping role. Using longitudinal data, McKinlay,
Crawford, and Tennstedt (1995) found that providing assistance
exerted the greatest toll on an individual’s personal life, followed
by family life and employment. They found that providing
assistance was particularly stressful for those who had multiple
responsibilities and for those who spent less time on themselves.
Murphy and her colleagues (1997) found that role overload was
highest for women helpers with multiple roles of parent or
worker. At the same time, resentment in the helping role was
highest for those women who had fewer roles apart from
providing help, those who had to quit work to fulfill their role,
and those without a partner. More recently, Stephens, Townsend,
Martire, and Drule (2001) examined role conflict experienced by
278 helping women who simultaneously played the role of
mother, wife, and employee. Their results suggested that part of
the stress that these women experienced was due to conflicts
between the helping role and the other roles they were playing.

Situational and Background Characteristics
Although we expect to find evidence of stress proliferation in
the everyday lives of all helpers, we believe that the nature and

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extent of exposure and reactivity to stress will vary with the
background and situational characteristics of the person involved. For instance, the social and economic characteristics of
helpers as well as the possession of resources from which they
can draw are important covariates to consider. We consider
several important ones in this article.
Adult children’s age is an important predictor of the provision of routine assistance. Older adult children give more support than younger adult children (Ikkink, van Tilburg, &
Knipscheer, 1999; Wong, Capoferro, & Soldo, 1999) and might
have fewer conflicting demands. Although the effect of adult
children’s gender on routine exchanges is not as well understood (Pinquart & Sorensen, 2006), it is quite clear that women,
¨
in particular daughters, spend more time providing assistance to
their older parents than do adult sons (Campbell & MartinMatthews, 2003).
Household structure also plays an important role in the
determination of exchanges between the generations and vulnerability to stressors. An adult child’s marital status is an important aspect of intergenerational exchanges, wherein unmarried
daughters are more likely to engage in an exchange of household assistance than married siblings for whom the opportunity
cost of providing assistance is higher (Couch, Daly, & Wolf,
1999). Moreover, the presence of minor children in marriedcouple households leads to increased time spent in domestic
work, reduced time in the labor market, decreased monetary
transfers to parents, and increased role overload (Ikkink et al.,
1999). Economic theories also suggest that the educational or
financial status of adult children facilitates the provision of
assistance to older parents. For instance, empirical studies
(Couch et al., 1999; Johnson, 2008) have found that siblings
with little education or earning lower wages provide hands-on
assistance to older parents, whereas their higher earning counterparts provide financial resources or use paid services. We
therefore expect that adult children with lower education may
be more distressed on days when assistance is provided.
Finally, several researchers have asserted that personal dispositions interact with stressful situations in determining individuals’ own appraisals of a stressor (Ben-Porath & Tellegen,
1990; Costa, Somerfield, & McCrae, 1996). Studies of personality traits have shown that neuroticism predicts increased
exposure and lowered adjustment to interpersonal daily stressors (Bolger & Zuckerman, 1995; Mroczek & Almeida, 2004).
Perceived mastery and control, in contrast, are known to buffer
the emotional effects of chronic daily stressors (Lachman &
Weaver, 1998; Pearlin & Schooler, 1978; Yates, Tennstedt, &
Chang, 1999). We therefore expect that adult children with
higher mastery and lower scores on the neuroticism trait will
experience less significant psychological distress on days when
assistance is provided to parents. Whereas some of the factors
listed above increase one’s vulnerability to stressors, others
may serve as protective factors.

Study Purpose, Hypotheses, and Research Questions
Daily diary designs provide a unique opportunity to simultaneously study within-person and between-person differences
by examining psychological distress in helpers on days when
assistance is provided versus days when it is not (withinperson), as well as by comparing helpers as a function of their
background and contextual factors (between-person). Given

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SAVLA ET AL.

that the proliferation of stressors on primary role-related
activities is a key determinant of stress and well-being among
individuals providing assistance, in the present study we
hypothesized that psychological distress would be higher on
days helpers encountered more daily situational factors (spent
more time on activities, encountered stressors, provided help
to other family members) in addition to providing assistance
to a parent. We also hypothesized that women; younger
individuals; African Americans; unmarried individuals; persons
with young children; as well as individuals with lower education, higher neuroticism, and lower mastery would be more
susceptible to psychological distress.
Using a representative sample of the population, we identified adult children that engage in a full range of assistance in
order to address two main questions. First, how are the daily
role-related experiences affected by the type of day (i.e.,
helping vs non-helping day)? Second, after we control for daily
role-related experiences and responsibilities and person-level
variables, is psychological distress higher on days when assistance is provided than on days when it is not?

METHODS

Data and Sample
We used data from participants in the National Study of
Daily Experiences (NSDE). The NSDE is a randomly selected
subsample of the National Survey of Midlife Development in
the United States (MIDUS) carried out under the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Network for Successful
Midlife Development (for detailed descriptions of the MIDUS
project, see Brim, Ryff, & Kessler, 2004). Out of the 1,242
MIDUS participants contacted, 1,031 (562 women, 469 men)
participated in the NSDE daily diary study, yielding a response
rate of 83%. Over the course of eight consecutive evenings,
participants completed short telephone interviews about their
daily experiences. The initiation of interviews was staggered
across days of the week to control for the possible confounding
between day of study and day of week. Participants completed
an average of seven of the eight interviews, resulting in a total
of 7,221 daily interviews. Participants received $20 for their
participation (for more details on the study, see Almeida,
Wethington, & Kessler, 2002). Out of the 1,031 NSDE participants, we identified 119 individuals who reported providing
either instrumental or emotional assistance to their parent on at
least 1 of the 8 days of the diary interview. The 119 individuals
completed an average of 6.9 days of interviews out of the
8 days, resulting in 824 daily interviews.

logical distress (for complete information on psychometric
properties of the scale and validation, refer to Kessler et al.,
2002; Mroczek & Kolarz, 1998). Cronbach’s alphas ranged
from .70 to .89 across the 8 days of administration.
Psychological distress in this sample had a positively skewed
distribution (M ¼ 1.97, SD ¼ 3.51, skewness ¼ 3.55) because
the scores clustered toward the lower end of the scale. Other
studies of more serious caregivers have seen this low rating of
psychological distress as well (Schulz et al., 1997). To adjust
for the skewness, we attempted to transform this variable to
a more symmetric distribution by adding a constant of unity to
the score before taking the natural logarithm of psychological
distress (Mlogged psychological distress ¼ 0.67, SD ¼ 0.83). We used
the logged psychological distress score for descriptive and
univariate analyses and relied on random effects tobit regression with left-side censoring for the multivariate model.
Predictor variables. —Using a broad definition of helping,
we assessed providing routine assistance to a parent as help
provided with emotional or instrumental tasks on each of the
8 days of the study. Two questions were asked regarding assistance to people living outside the house, in particular a parent.
The first question was ‘‘Did you provide any unpaid assistance
or instrumental assistance to someone outside the house?’’ (e.g.,
help with shopping, etc.). If participants agreed, then they were
asked to name each of those to whom they provided assistance
on that day. The list included parents. Likewise, the second
question was about providing emotional support (e.g., giving
advice, comforting them). Providing either emotional or instrumental support or both on a given day to a parent was coded as
1 if yes and 0 if no. Providing emotional or instrumental support
to someone else other than a parent was also used as a control
variable and was coded similar to the previous variable, namely
1 if provided support and 0 if provided no support on a given
day. In this way, we could distinguish assistance provided to
parents from assistance provided to others.
Three time-use variables measured competing everyday
situational demands. These variables were related to time spent
each day on tasks and activities other than providing assistance
to a parent. The first variable, routine chores, assessed the
amount of time the participant spent on routine chores in the
house, such as yard work. The second variable reflected
the amount of time spent on activities related to business, paid
work, or school, which included time traveling and thinking
about the work. The third variable considered the use of time
on activities related to leisure, such as relaxing, taking a nap, or
engaging in physical exercise or leisure activities. Time spent
on these activities was coded in hours and minutes.

Measures
Outcome variable. —Daily psychological distress was operationalized using an inventory of 10 emotions from the NonSpecific Psychological Distress Scale (Kessler et al., 2002;
Mroczek & Kolarz, 1998), which was conducted on each of the
8 days of telephone interviews. Participants rated these moodrelated questions on a 5-point scale (0 ¼ none of the time; 4 ¼
all of the time). The inventory included emotions such as
sadness, hopelessness, anxiety, and restlessness. The scale was
developed using item response models and factor analysis,
yielding a single-factor structure representing current psycho-

Background variables. —From the MIDUS survey, which was
collected approximately a year before the NSDE diary interviews, variables that acted as reasonably stable background
characteristics were included as between-person covariates in
these analyses. This study included demographic variables such
as gender (0 ¼ male, 1 ¼ female), African American race (0 ¼ no,
1¼yes), and education (1¼less than high school, 2¼high school,
3 ¼ college, 4 ¼ college and higher). Apart from these individual
characteristics, we utilized family-related variables such as
marital status (1 ¼ married, 0 ¼ not married) and whether the
participant had any children younger than 18 years (0 implying

ROUTINE ASSISTANCE TO PARENTS

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for the
Analytic Sample (N ¼ 119)
Variable

M

SD

Day assistance provided to parent (proportion)

0.28

0.45

2.19
4.26
10.68
0.04

2.25
4.60
3.92
0.20

44.51
0.67
0.65
0.06
0.38
2.90
2.24
5.91

11.41
0.47
0.48
0.23
0.48
0.93
0.74
0.92

Everyday situational factors
Time spent on routine chores (hr)
Time spent on work (hr)
Time spent on leisure and sleep (hr)
Engagement in additional helping tasks (proportion)
Background characteristics
Age of adult child (years)
Daughter (proportion)
Married (proportion)
Black (proportion)
Any children (proportion)
Education category
Neuroticism
Mastery

no children). We coded age reported during the NSDE diary
interview into categories: 1 ¼ 25 to 35 years (24.37%), 2 ¼ 36
to 45 years (30.25%), 3 ¼ 46 to 55 years (26.89%), 4 ¼ 56 to
64 years (15.97%), 5 ¼ 65 to 74 years (2.52%). Finally, we included trait neuroticism and personal mastery as two personal
characteristics variables. The neuroticism items included the
following four adjectives: moody, worrying, nervous, and calm
(Lachman & Weaver, 1997). Participants indicated how well
each of the four items described them on a 4-point scale from 1
(a lot) to 4 (not at all). All but the last item were reverse-coded,
and the mean across the items was taken such that a higher
value indicated higher levels of neuroticism. Scores ranged
from 1 to 4. Cronbach’s alpha for this sample was .76.
The personal mastery scale consisted of two items from
Pearlin and Schooler (1978) and two items from Lachman and
Weaver (1998). See Lachman and Weaver (1998) for more
information on this scale. Respondents rated on a 7-point scale
(1 ¼ strongly agree; 7 ¼ strongly disagree) how strongly they
agreed with the following questions: (a) I can do just about
anything I really set my mind to; (b) When I really want to do
something, I usually find a way to succeed at it; (c) Whether or
not I am able to get what I want is in my own hands; and (d)
What happens to me in the future depends mostly on me.
We recoded responses so that higher scores indicated greater
personal mastery. The scale was constructed by calculating the
mean across each set of items. Scores ranged from 1 to 7.
Cronbach’s alpha for this sample was .63. Table 1 provides
descriptive statistics for the total sample.

RESULTS

Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for the participants
in the study. The average age of participants was 45 years
(SD ¼ 11.41, range ¼ 25–74), 67% were female, 65% were
married, 38% had resident children younger than 18, and the
majority of the sample was Caucasian (94%), with high school
education or higher (M ¼ 2.90, SD ¼ 0.93). These participants
were on average moderately high on neuroticism (M ¼ 2.24,

S157

SD ¼ 0.74, range ¼ 1–4) and on mastery (M ¼ 5.91, SD ¼ 0.92,
range ¼ 1–7).
On average, participants provided assistance on 28% of the
study days (approximately 2 out of 8 days). A total of 66
participants (55%) provided routine assistance to their parents
on only 1 of the days, compared to 53 (45%) who provided assistance on more than 1 day of the study (not shown in Table 1).
On average, each day participants spent approximately 2 hr on
routine chores (M ¼ 2.19, SD ¼ 2.25); 4.5 hr on work-related
activities (M ¼ 4.26, SD ¼ 4.60); and approximately 11 hr on
leisure activities, sleep, and exercise (M ¼ 10.68, SD ¼ 3.92).
These participants also provided assistance to other family
members, friends, and work colleagues on 4% of the study
days. Out of the 119 participants, only 27 (22.69%) provided
assistance to other family members on parent care days. A total
of 39 participants (32.77%) provided instrumental support to
a parent, 60 participants (50.42%) provided emotional support,
and 20 participants (16.81%) provided both instrumental and
emotional support to a parent.

Univariate Analysis Examining Psychological
Distress and Role-Related Experiences
In order to examine if engaging in the helping role has an
immediate association with psychological distress and other
role-related experiences, we next considered time-use data and
role-related experiences to test using paired t tests whether days
when assistance was provided to parents were different from
days when it was not, as shown in Table 2. Participants reported
significantly higher psychological distress (t ¼ À2.01, p , .05)
on days when assistance was provided (Mlog ¼ 0.76) than on
days when it was not (Mlog ¼ 0.66). With regard to everyday
living activities, on average participants spent the same amount
of time on routine chores and leisure activities, however they
spent significantly less time (t ¼ 2.54, p , .01) on work-related
activities on days when assistance was provided (M ¼ 3.67)
than on days when it was not (M ¼ 4.61). Participants also
reported a significantly greater number of stressors on days
when assistance was provided (t ¼À3.00, p , .01). On average,
they experienced stressors on 57% of days when assistance was
provided, compared with 43% of the days when it was not (t ¼
À2.90, p , .01). Out of all stressors, network stressors (i.e.,
events that occurred in the lives of close family members and
friends) occurred more on days when assistance was provided
(experienced on 17% of helping days) than on days when it was
not (experienced on 7% of non-helping days).

Multivariate Analysis Examining Psychological
Distress and Role-Related Experiences
To take into account the clustering of participants on 8 days
of the study and in order to adjust for floor effects in reported
negative affect, in the next set of analysis we used a leftcensored random effects tobit regression model to predict daily
psychological distress. One of the main reasons for using daily
diary designs is that we expected there would be as much
within-person variation (i.e., helping days are different from
non-helping days) as between-person variation (i.e., participants differ from one another) in psychological distress among
participants. To examine this, we began our analysis with the

SAVLA ET AL.

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Table 2. Paired t Tests Comparing Psychological Distress, Daily Activities, and Stressor Variables on Days
When Assistance Was Provided Versus Not (N ¼ 119)
Days Assistance Provided

Days Assistance Not Provided

Variable

M

SD

M

SD

t

Psychological distress (log)

0.66

0.63

0.76

0.72

À2.01*

2.07
4.61
10.81

1.61
3.79
3.29

2.30
3.67
10.73

2.11
4.06
3.73

À1.25
2.54**
0.26

0.04
0.43
0.11

0.10
0.39
0.22

0.06
0.45
0.15

0.21
0.68
0.33

À1.06
À0.33
À1.24

0.57
0.43
0.24
0.13
0.09
0.07

0.49
0.31
0.23
0.21
0.16
0.15

0.79
0.57
0.29
0.12
0.13
0.17

0.80
0.43
0.39
0.29
0.29
0.32

À3.00**
À2.90**
À1.27
0.41
À1.50
À3.12**

Everyday tasks
Time spent on routine chores
Time spent on work
Time spent on leisure
Routine assistance to others
Provision of assistance to others
Provision of emotional assistance to others
Provision of instrumental assistance to others
Stressor variables
Number of stressors
Any stressors
Arguments
Work stressors
Home stressors
Network stressors
Note: *p , .05; **p , .01.

standard unconditional model that estimated the average
psychological distress and tested whether there was significant
variation in daily psychological distress. As we expected, we
found as much intraindividual variability as interindividual
variability. The intraclass correlation coefficient (rho) of 0.49
suggested that approximately half of the total variation in daily
psychological distress was within-person and the other half of
the variation was between-person. Model 1 in Table 3 indicated
that on average psychological distress was higher on days when

assistance was provided than days when it was not (p , .05).
We next estimated a series of models, beginning with a model
with everyday situational factors (within-person predictors)
followed by background characteristics (between-person predictors) predicting daily psychological distress.
Model 2 in Table 3 presents the results including the
everyday situational factors measured on 8 days of the study.
Results indicated that on days that participants devoted more
time to paid work (b ¼ 0.12, p , .05) and leisure activities and

Table 3. Random Effects Tobit Regression Predicting Daily Psychological Distress
Model 1 (Baseline)
Fixed Effect
Day assistance provided

Model 2 (Time-Varying Covariates)

Model 3 (Full Model)

b (SE)

b (SE)

b (SE)

0.84 (0.40)*

0.87 (0.39)*

0.88 (0.39)*

Everyday situational factors
À0.01
0.12
0.18
2.70

(0.09)
(0.05)*
(0.05)**
(0.85)**

À0.03
0.13
0.19
2.68

(0.09)
(0.05)*
(0.05)**
(0.86)**

0.40
0.13
À0.96
À0.01
2.14
À0.54
2.08
À0.53

Time spent on routine chores
Time spent on work
Time spent on leisure and sleep
Engagement in additional helping tasks

(0.25)
(0.57)
(0.56)
(1.04)
(0.60)**
(0.27)*
(0.38)**
(0.29)

Background characteristics
Age of adult child
Daughter
Married
Black
Any children
Education
Neuroticism
Mastery
Intercept
Variance components
Between-person (Level 2)
Variance (Intercept)
Within-person across days (Level 1)
Variance (Intercept)
Notes: N ¼ 119. Days of interviews ¼ 824.
*p , .05; **p , .01.

1.01 (0.31)**

À1.59 (0.81)*

À3.24 (2.76)

16.83 (0.34)**

15.73 (0.33)**

9.32 (0.29)**

17.33 (0.16)**

16.69 (0.16)**

16.83 (0.16)**

ROUTINE ASSISTANCE TO PARENTS

sleep (b ¼ 0.18, p , .01), they reported higher psychological
distress as compared to days when they spent less time on these
activities. Spending time on routine household chores was not
related to psychological distress. Additionally, psychological
distress was higher on days when the participant provided
assistance to another family member other than the parent (b ¼
2.70, p , .01). Even after we controlled for the amount of time
spent on paid work, on leisure activities and sleep, and
engaging in other helping tasks, providing assistance to a parent
was associated with the experience of greater psychological
distress (b ¼ 0.87, p , .05).
Model 3 in Table 3 presents the results including situational
(within-person) as well as background factors (between-person),
such as age of adult child, gender, marital status, race, parental
status, education, and personality factors such as neuroticism
and mastery. Examination of the between-person variables
showed that having less education (b ¼ À0.54, p , .01), being
single (b ¼ À0.96, p ¼ .07), and having young children (b ¼
2.14, p , .01) increased the chances of experiencing psychological distress across all days. Conversely, having lower neuroticism (b ¼ 2.08, p , .001) and higher mastery (b ¼ À0.53,
p , .06) acted as protective factors against psychological
distress. Age and gender of the adult child as well as race did
not predict daily psychological distress among participants.
Finally, even after we controlled for the situational factors as
well as the background characteristics, providing assistance to
a parent continued to be associated with greater psychological
distress on the day help was given compared to days when it
was not (b ¼ 0.88, p , .05). We explored several interactions
between everyday situational factors and background characteristics of the adult children; however, perhaps due to the limited
sample size, we did not find any in the present study.

DISCUSSION
Previous research has examined assistance between generations primarily using retrospective accounts of assistance
provided over long time spans. These methods do not capture
the everyday hassles and disturbances that are associated with
the act of providing daily assistance to a parent. In the present
study, we took a microlevel approach to examining the association of providing routine assistance amid everyday circumstances and the psychological consequences for the adult child
over shorter time spans.
In order to address our first research question, we began by
examining how daily role-related experiences were affected on
days when assistance was provided compared with when it was
not. Past studies that have examined the relationship between
work roles and helping roles have found that helpers often have
to give up or cut down on personal roles (employee or parental
role) to provide assistance (Murphy et al., 1997; Stephens et al.,
2001). Consistent with this idea, we found that our sample of
helpers was reasonably involved in routine daily chores and
work-related activities, but on days when assistance was provided they spent less time on work-related activities. Notably,
we also found that helpers reported more stressors on days
when assistance was provided than on days when it was not.
Many of the stressors revolved around participants’ social networks. This is an interesting finding, because network stressors
are events that occur in the lives of others. Perhaps helpers’

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expression of care and compassion further exposes them to the
stressors of friends and family.
To address our second research question, we used a multivariate analysis approach to examine psychological distress on
days when assistance was provided versus days when it was
not, taking into account daily role-related experiences and
responsibilities and background characteristics. Our results
clearly show that even at the microlevel, the enactment of the
role of providing routine assistance to a parent is in itself
stressful. Consistent with our first hypothesis and in line with
previous research that suggests that conflicting demands of
helping and fulfilling other personal roles (e.g., employee,
parent) are important factors that account for negative effects on
the well-being of the helper, we found that any increase in the
amount of time spent on work on a given day increased psychological distress on days when assistance was provided. A
surprising finding was that time spent on leisure and sleep was
also related to higher psychological distress on days when
assistance was provided. Because leisure and sleep are also
planned activities that may cause role conflict and overload on
days when assistance is provided, it is not surprising to find that
distress was higher on those days. Further research is required
to examine the implications of these findings. Some researchers
have suggested that if these factors are held constant, providing
assistance might lead to positive appraisals of the helping role
(Marks, 1998). Our findings do not support this. Even after we
controlled for the amount of time spent on activities such as
household chores, work, as well as providing help to others,
providing assistance to a parent was still significantly related to
higher daily psychological distress.
Consistent with our second hypothesis, we found clear
evidence that being single, being non-White, and having lower
education was associated with higher daily psychological
distress (Couch et al., 1999; Pinquart & Sorensen, 2006).
¨
Moreover, we also found evidence that personal characteristics
such as low neuroticism and high mastery buffered the effects
of care enactment on psychological distress. However, we did
not find any effects for age, gender, and race in our study. This
could be because of the relative homogeneity of this sample, as
the study was not specifically designed to study assistance
provided by adult children. The age range within a sample of
adult children would also be more restricted than in a sample
that also included assistance provided by spouses. It is also
possible that differences between sons and daughters are less
pronounced than those found between husbands and wives
(e.g., Aneshensel et al., 1995; Miller, 1990; Zarit, Todd, &
Zarit, 1986; Zarit & Whitlatch, 1992) or across a wider continuum of assistance (Davey & Szinovacz, 2007). Likewise, the
small proportion of non-Whites in the sample made it difficult
to find any race effects and also restricts the generalizability of
the results.
The present study is among the first systematic studies that
have examined the daily impact of providing routine assistance
to a parent living outside the house; however, there are several
limitations that we need to acknowledge. First of all, the present
data were not collected with the intention of understanding
routine assistance to parents. We therefore had to rely on global
measures of assistance instead of specific dimensions of care,
such as number of hours of assistance to a parent. Because
measures of intensity of providing care were not available, we

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SAVLA ET AL.

are not able to clarify whether it is the act of providing care
or the intensity of providing care that is more important
for predicting psychological distress. Future research should
examine the daily intensity of help provision and its consequences on indicators of distress. Additionally, variables that
are important predictors of intergenerational exchanges, such as
parent’s health status and proximity to the parent, were not
known and so could not be included. Providing assistance to
a parent who lives in closer proximity might be physically
draining and exhausting; however, being far away from a parent
might not give adult children immunity from feeling overwhelmed on days the parent requires care. The lack of information about parent’s health status and proximity to parents did
not allow us to assess variability in everyday distress due to
these factors. Finally, we tested several interactions between
providing daily assistance, daily exposure to stressors, and resilience variables, but due to the low power of the study, these
could not be estimated and remain to be explored in future
diary studies.
Despite these limitations, the current study clearly suggests
the possible link between assisting a parent and the downward
trajectory of health and well-being in caregiving. The accumulation of small and large daily stressors may build up and spill
over into other areas of life, eventually undermining psychological resources and well-being. Our results also imply that
individuals who experience greater role conflict and demand
on their time as well as those with the fewest resources experience the most distress on days when assistance is provided
to parents. These results also suggest new strategies for supporting people assisting parents and other older relatives.
Rather than designing respite and support programs in a nonspecific way, experts could design programs that specifically
target the everyday care events that are stressful. By building on
an understanding of the daily events that people find stressful,
this approach could make daily life easier for older adults and
the individuals who support them and prevent the depletion of
care resources. By focusing on stressors in this way, support
programs may be more effective in relieving caregiver burden
while also giving financial and other support for those with the
fewest resources.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported in part by National Institute of Mental
Health Training Grant T32 MH18904 to Jyoti Savla and MacArthur
Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development and
National Institute on Aging Grant AG19239 awarded to Adam Davey.
J. Savla conceptualized the paper, analyzed the data, and wrote the
paper. D. M. Almeida designed the research, performed the data collection,
and assisted in writing the paper. A. Davey and S. H. Zarit assisted with the
conceptualization, analysis, and interpretation of the paper and contributed
to writing the paper.
CORRESPONDENCE
Address correspondence to Jyoti Savla, Center for Gerontology, Virginia
Polytechnic and State University, 237 Wallace Hall (0426), Blacksburg,
VA 24061. E-mail: JSavla@vt.edu
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Received August 15, 2007
Accepted January 22, 2008
Decision Editor: Kenneth F. Ferraro, PhD