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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.3365
igaa057.3365
Abstracts
Session 10320 (Late Breaking Poster)
Minority & Diverse Populations
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Child’s Developmental Disabilities and Parental Well-being in Midlife and Old Age: Does Race Matter?
Lee Juha  Gao Manjing  Lee Chioun  
University of California, Riverside, Riverside, California, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”916 916
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Having a child with developmental disabilities (DD) compromises parents’ health and well-being. We have little knowledge on whether the association is robust to the presence of exposure-outcome confounders and how it varies by race. Guided by life-course perspectives, we evaluate (1) the association between having a child with DD and parental well-being and (2) racial disparities in the likelihood of having a child with DD (differential exposure), and/or the effect of having a child with DD on parental well-being (differential vulnerabilities). We advance prior studies by including a wide array of parent’s early-life adversities (ELAs, e.g., poverty and abuse), which may link the predictor to the outcome. Using the core, Refresher, and Milwaukee samples from Midlife in the United States (N=9,640, 25% non-Whites), we conducted regression analysis with race as a moderator. Compared to having a healthy child, parents having a child with DD reported lower well-being even after controlling for ELAs. While the likelihood of having a child with DD (around 10%) is similar for both non-Hispanic Whites and African Americans, African American parents are more adversely affected by having a child with DD across most of the eudaimonic well-being indicators (i.e., autonomy, self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, personal growth, environmental mastery). The later-life well-being of racial minorities is disproportionally affected by having a child with DD. Future research avenues include identifying life-course pathways that contribute to this differential vulnerability.