It Takes a Village (or a City): Perceived Economic Strain, Caregiver Ambivalence, and Quality of Life Among Caregiving Grandparents Across Perceived Residential Area Types

Background/Objectives: Grandparent caregiving is a common and demanding role, and perceived economic strain is among the more consistent correlates of caregiver well-being. Guided by Hill’s ABC-X family stress model, this study examined whether perceived economic strain was associated with quality of life (QoL) among U.S. caregiving grandparents through two caregiving appraisals, caregiver burden and caregiver ambivalence, and whether perceived residential area type (a single self-classification item, with higher scores indicating a more urban perception) moderated the ambivalence–QoL relation. Methods: Participants included 424 caregiving grandparents recruited through an opt-in online panel. QoL was measured with the two-item WHOQOL-BREF general facet. Storage codes for the health-satisfaction item were verified against the survey instrument; a scoring error affecting them was corrected, and all results reflect the corrected scoring. A serial mediation model (PROCESS Model 6) and a moderated serial mediation model (PROCESS Model 87) were tested, controlling for age, sex, and marital status entered as categorical indicators, with percentile bootstrap confidence intervals (5000 samples). Results: Perceived economic strain was strongly and negatively associated with QoL (total effect B = −4.64, p < 0.001; the full QoL regression model explained 38% of the variance, R2 = 0.38). Greater strain was associated with greater burden, and burden with greater ambivalence, but the hypothesized negative serial pathway was not supported, and the serial indirect relation was positive and small (effect = 0.20, 95% CI [0.04, 0.41]). Perceived area type moderated the ambivalence–QoL relation (interaction B = 0.63, p = 0.002). Ambivalence was associated with lower QoL among grandparents who perceived their communities as small towns (B = −3.97) and with higher QoL among those with urban (B = 0.93) or major metropolitan (B = 1.09) perceptions. The moderation held across robustness checks, including an ordinal specification of the outcome, but did not replicate with an objective metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan indicator. Conclusions: The findings are cross-sectional, come from a relatively advantaged and nonrepresentative sample, and rest on brief measures, so causal conclusions are not warranted, and practice implications remain preliminary. Even so, the results support the idea that the meaning of caregiving ambivalence for well-being may depend on the kind of community caregivers believe they live in, and the strong relation between perceived economic strain and QoL supports continued attention to financial hardship in policies and programs serving caregiving grandparents.