Asian American older adults in the United States are growing more rapidly than any other group. Between 1980 and 1990 Asian and Pacific Islander elderly (individuals over than age of 65) in California increased by 143.9 percent. Care of the nations elderly has been shown to be primarily by families, particularly women. This responsibility is even greater for females in Asian cultures where a womans obligation to her family often takes priority over obligations to self, religion, or country. Caregiving demands coupled with the economic necessity of employment outside the home places female Asian immigrants in the United States in double jeopardy. They are subject to stress from combining caregiving with employment and other roles, and to additional stress because of the conflict of traditional cultural values with acculturative forces in the United States which support independence of women and the rights of the individual. These forces pull Asian American women in two opposing directions in the context of caring for elderly parents. At the same time it is possible that cultural values of family centrality, interdependence and reciprocity serves to balance some of the demands and mediate stress. The problems Asian American women caregivers face have had very limited attention. Chinese and Filipino Americans are the two largest groups of Asians in California and in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and Riverside counties. The objectives of this study are to generate a theory of caregiving for elderly parents by women in Chinese and Filipino families; and, to compare and contrast the formulation with existing theories that describe family caregiving and women s roles in non-Asian American families.
The specific aims of the study are: 1) To describe the process of caregiving for elderly parents by Chinese and Filipino American women; 2) To test Pearlin s caregiver stress model on Chinese and Filipino American women caring for elderly parents: a) describe and examine relationships among caregiving demands, resources and outcomes in the two groups of women; b) describe and examine relationships among role identity, role integration, and perceived health in two groups, and differences between the groups. It is hypothesized that both role identity and role integration and perceived health have a positive relationship to perceived health; c) identify predictors of perceived health in Chinese and Filipino American women caregivers. This will be a descriptive correlational study using both grounded theory and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. Grounded theory analysis will be used to examine and report data for Aim #1. Correlation and regression analysis will be used to examine and report data for Aim #2. The study requires 5 years of effort to be completed. Years 1, 2, and 3 will be used to translation and testing of tools, and for interviews with 60 informants. Year 4 will complete collection and analysis of data and year 5 will be for preparation of manuscripts and writing the final report.
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