Caring for aging parents: how it can strain a marriage and siblings, and what may help

Imagine this (a made-up illustration, not real people or clients): the visit was supposed to be an easy one. On the drive back from her parents’ house, a woman goes quiet. She noticed things this time: mail piled on the counter, a pill organizer still full from the week before, her father asking the same question twice before dinner. Her husband asks if she is okay, and she snaps that he would not understand. Later her brother texts, “You’re closer, can you just check on them more?” By the time she gets home she is worried about her parents, annoyed with her brother and guilty about her husband, all at once.

Moments like this can come at holiday gatherings, when adult children may see their parents up close for the first time in a while. This post looks at what caring for aging parents can ask of a marriage and of sibling relationships, what research suggests about where the strain comes from, and ways couples and families in Michigan can talk about it before one person ends up carrying everything.

Why might the holidays bring up worries about aging parents?

Michigan’s governor has proclaimed November as Family Caregivers Month in recent years, including November 2025. When that proclamation was announced, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Director Elizabeth Hertel spoke of “the nearly 1.7 million family caregivers in our state.” This year Thanksgiving is on Thursday, November 26, per the federal holiday calendar from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and for some families it is one of the few times a year that everyone is under one roof.

That can make the holidays a natural time to notice changes in a parent’s health, and also a tense time to bring them up. Plenty of people help a parent with rides, bills or appointments without ever calling it caregiving. In the same announcement, MDHHS noted that, according to the Caregiver Action Network, more than half of those providing care in the United States do not recognize themselves as caregivers.

How many people in Michigan are family caregivers?

More than many people realize, although the figures below count care for anyone who needs it, not only aging parents. Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s 2025 proclamation estimated that 1.2 to 1.7 million Michigan residents provide more than 1.12 billion hours of unpaid care for older adults, service members, veterans, individuals with disabilities and people with serious or chronic health conditions. It also noted that a person aged 60 or older resides in 38% of Michigan households. An earlier proclamation, for November 2023, cited Michigan Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data from 2021 showing that one in five (21.4%) Michigan adults were providing care to family members or friends. Estimates differ by source and year, but each points to a large share of Michigan adults.

Nationally, the AARP and National Alliance for Caregiving report Caregiving in the U.S. 2025, based on a survey of 6,858 caregivers, found that 63 million Americans, nearly 1 in 4 adults, provided ongoing care for an adult or a child with a complex medical condition or a disability in the past year. A few of its other findings help explain why caregiving can spill into the rest of family life:

• Nearly 1 in 3 caregivers are also raising children under 18 while caring for an adult loved one, rising to 47% among caregivers under 50.
• Six in 10 family caregivers are employed, and half of those working caregivers report work disruptions such as going in late or leaving early.
• Nearly half of caregivers experienced at least one major financial impact, such as taking on debt or stopping savings.
• Nearly 1 in 4 caregivers report feeling socially isolated.

Caregiving can also weigh on the caregiver’s own well-being. The 2023 Michigan proclamation reported that caregivers in Michigan had a significantly higher prevalence of poor mental health than non-caregivers (19.6% vs. 12.9%). None of this means caring for a parent will go badly for you. It does mean that if you are finding it hard, you are far from the only one.

How can caring for aging parents affect your marriage?

When one partner starts spending more time, money and worry on a parent, the other partner feels it too. There may be fewer free evenings, more last-minute changes of plans and more conversations that end up being about logistics. Not every couple finds it a strain. But research suggests that how each partner thinks about helping a parent may matter, not only how much help is given.

In a study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, Courtney Polenick and colleagues looked at 132 middle-aged married couples from the Family Exchanges Study, recruited in the Philadelphia area. Each spouse reported how often they gave everyday support to their own parents, such as advice, emotional support or practical help, and how they felt about helping. The researchers found that the link between helping parents and marital satisfaction depended on both partners’ beliefs:

• When wives gave more frequent support to their parents, husbands were less satisfied with the marriage if the husbands felt a low sense of obligation to help parents, or if the wives felt a high one.
• When husbands gave more frequent support to their parents, wives were more satisfied with the marriage if the wives reported high personal rewards from helping parents, or if the husbands reported low ones.

The authors concluded that both spouses’ perceptions are important. One reading of these findings is that each partner’s own beliefs about helping parents may shape how the other partner’s caregiving lands, which suggests that talking about those beliefs could be worthwhile. The study has clear limits: it included only heterosexual married couples from one region, its data were collected in 2008, and because it measured everything at one point in time, it cannot show that helping parents causes changes in a marriage.

A few patterns that can show up when one partner is caring for a parent:

• The invisible load. One partner tracks appointments, medications and phone calls in their head, and the other partner may not see how much it adds up to.
• Loyalty binds. The caregiving partner may feel caught between a parent’s needs and a spouse’s needs, and either choice can feel like letting someone down.
• Quiet resentment. One partner feels the marriage keeps coming second, but does not want to seem heartless by saying so, and the feeling builds without being named.

Why do siblings clash over a parent’s care?

In a study published in The Gerontologist, J. Jill Suitor, Megan Gilligan, Kaitlin Johnson and Karl Pillemer used data from 450 adult children in 214 families in which the children reported that their mothers had needed care within the two years before the interview. They found that both providing care and perceiving that a mother favored certain children as future caregivers were associated with tension between siblings. The effect of caregiving on sibling tension was greater when perceptions of favoritism were also present.

The pattern looked similar whether people felt that they themselves were the preferred future caregiver or that a sibling was. The authors point out that siblings are typically the people caregivers turn to for support when they take on care of older parents, “yet these relationships are often a major source of interpersonal stress.” Old patterns of sibling rivalry may resurface when a parent’s needs grow. As with the marriage research, this study shows associations rather than causes, and its families came from a study of mothers aged 65 to 75 who were first interviewed in 2001 to 2003, so it may not describe every family.

How can couples talk about caregiving before it takes over?

There is no single right arrangement, and what works will depend on your parent’s needs, your finances, your work and your own health. These steps may help keep the conversation about a shared plan rather than a contest over who cares more.

1. Name what is already happening. Write down what you are already doing for your parent in a typical week: calls, rides, bills, visits, worry. Seeing it on paper can help both partners understand the real load.
2. Ask about expectations, not just tasks. What does each of you believe adult children owe their parents? What did you see your own parents do for theirs? Given the research above, these beliefs may be worth talking about openly.
3. Agree on what you are protecting. Some couples find it helps to decide together what stays off-limits, such as one evening a week, a savings goal or time with your own children, so that caregiving does not quietly take everything.
4. Let the non-caregiving partner say how it feels for them. Missing your partner, or feeling second to a parent, does not make someone selfish. Hearing it early may keep it from coming out sideways later.
5. Revisit the plan. A parent’s needs can change. Treat any arrangement as something you will check in on, not a promise that holds forever.

How can siblings share the care more fairly?

Caregiving is not always split evenly, and an even split may not be realistic when one sibling lives nearby and another lives out of state. Some families find these approaches useful:

• Hold a family meeting with a clear agenda. Cover what your parent needs now, what they want, and what may be coming. If your parent is able to take part, include them. If the meeting also has to sort out holiday plans, our Journal piece on how couples can split the holidays between families may help with that part.
• Divide by strengths, not just distance. A sibling who lives far away may be able to handle insurance calls, paperwork or paying for help, while someone nearby covers rides and visits.
• Put it in writing. A shared list or calendar can make each person’s contribution visible and cut down on “I didn’t know” moments.
• Speak to the present, not the past. Old hurts about who was the favorite may come up. Acknowledging them without trying to settle every one of them can help keep the focus on the parent’s needs today.

Where can Michigan caregivers find practical help?

Getting practical help may also ease some of the emotional strain. In Michigan, the Mi Caregiver Connection website, launched by the Area Agencies on Aging Association of Michigan, offers a caregiver help tool, support groups and a way to connect with your local Area Agency on Aging. If your parent lives in another state, the federal Eldercare Locator, a public service of the Administration for Community Living, connects people to services for older adults and their families and can be reached at 1-800-677-1116.

When might therapy help with caregiving stress?

Some families work things out with a few honest conversations and a shared calendar. For others, caregiving brings up conflicts that keep repeating, or the stress starts to crowd out everything else. Therapy is not a way to decide who is right about your parent’s care. It may offer a structured space to slow down, hear one another and make decisions you can live with.

Couples therapy may help partners who keep having the same argument about time, money or loyalty to a parent. Family therapy can bring adult siblings, and sometimes a parent, together to talk through roles and old tensions with a neutral person in the room.

Iryna Morhunova-Sutton, LLMFT, sees individuals, couples and families located in Michigan through online sessions. If caring for aging parents has started to strain your marriage or your family, the appointment request form is there whenever you are ready. If you or someone you love is in crisis, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text at 988, and in an emergency, call 911.