Title : Resilience and well-being in middle-aged adults experiencing double and triple caregiving
Abstract:
As human longevity continues to increase, older parents and their adult children are sharing progressively longer periods of their lives, with adult children increasingly assuming responsibility for providing care to their ageing parents (filial caregiving; Cicirelli, 1988, 1990; Morais et al., 2019). At the same time, midlife adults typically occupy multiple roles and responsibilities that involve complex demands and challenges characteristic of this developmental stage. In this context, Lachman (2015) highlighted the need to advance scientific knowledge on midlife, particularly among individuals engaged in multiple caregiving roles, namely double and triple caregivers (DePasquale et al., 2016). Concurrently, the literature has identified resilience, defined as an individual's capacity to sustain and even enhance psychological well-being in the face of adversity (Ryff, 2017), as one of the most important psychosocial resources during midlife. Accordingly, the present study aims to examine the associations between resilience, psychological well-being, and work–family balance among midlife adults engaged in double or triple caregiving. The study includes professionally active midlife adults aged between 40 and 60 years, with at least one child and/or at least one living parent aged 65 years or older with whom they maintain regular contact. Data are collected using an online assessment protocol comprising a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Work–Family Enrichment Scale (WFES; Carlson, Kacmar, Wayne, & Grzywacz, 2006), the Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS; Ryff, 1989), the Loving/Working: Are They Related? questionnaire (Hazan & Shaver, 1990), and the Resilience Scale (RS; Wagnild & Young, 1993). The findings are expected to (1) characterize midlife adults engaged in double or triple caregiving, (2) examine the relationships between resilience, psychological well-being, and work–family balance in this population, and (3) contribute to the scientific understanding of a population group that plays pivotal familial and societal roles in the context of population ageing.
Keywords: Midlife; Ageing; Resilience; Well-being; Double caregiving; Triple caregiving.
