The effectiveness of short-term support groups in reducing the burden of parent care using McClusky's theory of margin.

Abstract

The increasing availability of short-term support groups designed to reduce the burden of parent care, and the positive outcomes typically verbalized by participants, obscure the fact that little empirical evidence is available on the effectiveness of these group intervention programs. The present study conceptualized caregiver burden in terms of McClusky's theory of margin, where margin refers to the reserve capacity of the caregiver to continue providing care. Two major questions were addressed: (1) Do short-term support groups for caregivers of elderly parents increase the perceived margin of participants? (2) What is the nature of the caregiver's perceived margin? Using a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design, 25 adult daughters enrolled in either a mutual-aid or a didactic parent care support group were compared to 20 daughters who never joined a support group. Perceived margin increased for the mutual-aid group and decreased for the didactic group. The observed increase in perceived margin for the treatment group after six weeks was not significant. Components of the group experience reported to be most helpful were those which reduced feelings of isolation and increased feelings of self worth. The tasks at which group participants reported becoming more effective as caregivers were expressive rather than instrumental--getting along with parent, expressing feelings, and coping with caregiving. The discussion includes recommendations for increasing effectiveness of short-term support groups and suggestions for future research attempting to document the success of such groups. The discussion also suggests steps future investigations can use to consider adjustment to parent care as well as other critical life events in terms of "margin.". Several questions emerged from this study and should frame future research on McClusky's concept of margin. Priority ought to be given to enhancing our understanding about how appraisals of margin shift over time, whether control is an outcome or a means of attaining margin, and how personal goals motivate the adult to maintain margin.