Psychosocial factors leading to harmony or disharmony in sibling relationships in mid-life when faced with caregiving responsibilities for aging parents

With increasing age individuals may become frail and require emotional, physical, or financial support from family members. A very delicate balance between and among adult siblings, who may be the potential caregivers for their aging parents, is required. The complex issues that underscore the interactions of siblings in mid-life when functioning as caregivers for aging parents were explored. The thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of 14 siblings from five separate families (two dyad groups, two triad groups, and one tetrad group) were examined. This study focused on understanding what psychosocial factors contributed to harmony or disharmony in sibling relationships in mid-life when functioning as caregivers. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used as supportive partners in the process. The naturalistic inquiry method, the ethnographic interview, was employed for data collection, while descriptive statistics addressed the relevant issues in order to support the conclusions. Five themes and 28 variables subsumed under these themes emerged from the data. The first theme focused on how the siblings assumed beginning, middle, and end levels of caregiving and examined the degree of anxiety that the siblings experienced while engaged in caregiving. Theme two outlined negative and positive psychosocial factors from childhood that influenced the adult sibling relationships and assessed the perceived health in the family of origin. Theme three enumerated the barriers to harmony currently existing in the sibling relationships and evaluated issues of boundaries and coercion in their relationships. Theme four focused on the discordant and amicable ways that the siblings problem-solved, made decisions and resolved conflict, and measured if there were a relationship between harmony and differentiation. Finally, the fifth theme outlined the coping strategies that the siblings utilized and looked at the relationship of self-esteem and coping while engaged in caregiving. Implications for therapy included the importance of family history in the dynamics of the family and the crucial role of the parents in both the past and the present interactions of their children.