The Availability of Care for Late-Middle-Aged Adults With Chronic ...

Litwak demonstrated that optimal informal support groups were chosen based on four dimensions: proximity, length of commitment, commonality of lifestyle or major social roles, and size. In the case of caregiving, spouses and children are generally the clos-est in proximity and have the greatest commitment level compared with other groups. This proximity and the commitment level are important, given that a need for care may arise at any point during the day or night (Litwak). In addition, ADL and IADL tasks themselves do not require that an individual have a common lifestyle with the person in need in order to carry out the task. Children, as well as same-aged adults (e.g., spouses), can successfully assume the role. Nor do the caregiving tasks require any special knowledge on the part of the caregiver, eliminating the necessity for a formally trained individual. And because the majority of care provided to individuals in need comes from the primary caregiver, in the case of caregiving, the size of the social network should not be as important as the composition of the network (Messeri et al., 1993).

Litwak’s model predicted, and research on the elder population confirmed, that spouses and children are indeed the most prevalent caregivers to older persons, followed by other relatives, friends, and finally nonrelatives (Jette, Tennstedt, & Branch, 1992; Kemper, 1988; Stone, Cafferata, & Sangl, 1987, Wolff & Kasper, 2006). But though Litwak’s task-specificity model suggests that the optimal choice of caregivers will follow a similar order for all age groups, the life course perspective hints at potential age differences in the amount of care available to these individuals. Many factors influence the structure of one’s social network and the amount of support provided by this network, including the characteristics of the individual and those of their network members (Faber & Wasserman, 2001).