Family care exchanges across the life span

Abstract This chapter presents a life-span model of family care exchanges that underscores how caregiving and care receiving are dynamics that are shared across a network of family members and reflect the family’s history with care exchanges throughout the life span. The model is used to integrate and review the literature on families managing chronic illness conditions during childhood and adolescence with the traditional gerontological literature. A set of common risk and protective factors are identified that help to understand positive versus negative family care exchanges. Novel research questions identified by the model as well as implications for policies regarding caregiving are drawn.