Caregiving experiences of informal caregivers: The importance of characteristics of the informal caregiver, care recipient, and care situation

Due to the ageing of society and changes in the long-term care system, the importance of informal care is increasing. The increasing pressure on informal caregivers makes insights in both the conditions related to negative caregiving experiences and to positive caregiving experiences, such as feelings of reward, enrichment or personal growth, necessary. First of all, this study showed that positive and negative caregiving experiences are not related to the same caregiving aspects: for instance, informal caregivers experienced more burden when they provided more hours and more different care tasks, while they experienced more positive caregiving experiences when their intrinsic caregiving motivation was stronger. Second, the care situation of spousal (caring for a spouse) and adult-child caregivers (caring for a parent) differed, as were the aspects related to positive and negative caregiving experiences. And third, this study showed that the spill-over of informal care to other life domains, such as paid work, relates to negative caregiving experiences. Moreover, negative spill-over can result in adaptations at work. These study results demonstrate that for the development of interventions to support informal caregivers, it needs to be taken into account that spousal and adult-child caregivers differ and that informal care can have a negative impact on paid work. In addition, for strengthening positive caregiving experiences a different focus might be necessary compared to the alleviation of negative caregiving experiences.