The dramatic proportionate increase of older people in the population - especially the "very old" in need of supportive services -assumes unprecedented importance in the light of another broad social trend: the rapid increase in labor-force participation by married middle-aged women. Such daughters and daughters-in-law have traditionally been the main providers of services to the noninstitutionalized elderly. Heightened demands for parent care at a time when the women have more competing responsibilities than ever before expose both generations to the risk of negative mental/emotional and physical effects. The study would focus on family situations in which a married middle-aged woman provides some level of assistance to her elderly widowed mother and is the family member most relied on. The research aims are (1) to determine the effects of the work/nonwork status of the daughter on the burdens that she and her husband perceive as resulting from parent care, and the effects of these burdens on their mental and physical well-being; (2) to identify those characteristics of the daughters, their husbands, and the elderly mothers that interact with the work/nonwork status of the daughters to predict severe burden on the middle-aged couple; and (3) to determine how patterns of care to elderly widowed mothers vary with the work/nonwork status of the daughters - that is, how the amounts and types of care provided and their allocation vary across the available family and nonfamily networks of service providers, and in particular between working and nonworking daughters. Six hundred people would be studied: 200 families which include an elderly widowed nother who is not institutionalized, a married daughter (100 who work outside the home and 100 who do not), and that woman's husband. The sample would include 60 elderly women who live in the homes of daughters (of whom 30 work and 30 who do not) and 140 who live independently (again with equal number of working and nonworking daughters).