The caregiving gap between men and women has grown

Women in the United States can expect to provide seven years of care over their lifetimes to aging family members or friends—up from six in 2011, new research shows.

As of 2023, that amounts to three years more than men, whose lifetime caregiving held steady at four years, according to a new study published in the Journals of Gerontology Series B.

Caregivers help older adults with various tasks, including personal care, household chores, transportation, and medical tasks.

“Millions of adults help an older relative or friend manage their daily activities and the numbers of men and women in this role are growing rapidly in the US,” says Vicki Freedman, research professor in the Survey Research Center at U-M’s Institute for Social Research. “Despite attention to the growing number of men taking on caregiving responsibilities, the gap in lifetime family caregiving has not closed between men and women in recent years.”

Freedman and Crystal Yee To Ng found that this caregiving disparity does not apply to spousal care. Men and women can expect to spend an equal number of years over their lifetimes caring for a husband, wife, or partner—averaging about 1.5 years.

However, the gap between women and men extends to other common relationships. Women can expect to provide more than one additional year of care for a parent and several more months for a grandparent. The researchers also found women could expect to spend more than an extra year caring for extended family and friends.

“These findings are not limited to one type of assistance,” Freedman says. “Rather, for each type of care we examined—from bathing or dressing to providing rides—we found women could expect to spend more years over their lifetimes than men caring for an older adult.”

The researchers analyzed nearly 8,500 responses to the National Study of Caregiving along with federal population data to calculate lifetime care estimates for US adults ages 20 and older.

While most previous studies measure caregiving in quick snapshots over a few months, this research summarizes the information across age groups to estimate lifetime caregiving.

“This study uses a demographic technique to calculate how many years of caregiving to an older adult a man or woman can expect to provide over their lifetimes if current rates hold into the future,” Freedman says.

The number of family caregivers assisting US adults ages 65 and older expanded over the past decade, jumping from 18 million in 2011 to more than 24 million in recent years.

At the same time, the researchers point to a growing number of Americans living without close family. As the percentage of older adults with no close kin rises, so will the need for care outside immediate family networks.

“Given growing numbers of older adults without close kin and increasing care needs among those reaching later life, we may see these gaps between men and women continue to grow in the future,” Freedman says. “But future caregiving patterns will depend on many factors, including changes to families, the availability and affordability of paid care, and social norms that may influence who provides support.”

The National Institute on Aging supported the research.

Source: University of Michigan

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How do pregnant women cope with stressful news?

How pregnant women cope with stressful news may matter more than the news itself, a new study finds.

The everchanging social, political, and economic landscape in many countries has become more tenuous and intense in recent years.

Respondents in a 2026 report from the World Economic Forum indicated a prevailing mood of uncertainty, with 50% of them anticipating a turbulent or stormy outlook on life over the next two years. This negative perception swells to 57% of respondents when looking ahead to the next 10 years.

Social structures, government policies, and cultural norms shape how people think, live, and interact. If those factors are in constant flux, the repercussions can have adverse effects. More worrisome, however, is how external stressors affect pregnant women, who are already experiencing significant physiological changes in preparation for the birth of a baby and, subsequently, adjusting to life with a newborn.

If there are additional factors in a mother’s own life—such as violent, turbulent, or uncertain social or political circumstances—then her fear and anxiety will likely increase, potentially putting her and her unborn child’s health at risk. The impacts of these sociopolitical stressors could lead to preterm birth, among other complications, not to mention the psychological and physiological effects.

“Yet, we know very little about how mothers cope with these stressors,” says Kristine Joy Chua, assistant professor in the anthropology department at the University of Notre Dame. Chua researches reproductive biology, maternal health, and health inequities, particularly within Filipino communities and communities of color.

This gap motivated Chua and her fellow researchers to ask the question: How do expectant mothers manage these uncertainties and cope with sociopolitical stressors? The answer became the focus of their recently published study in the journal Social Science and Medicine, of which Chua was the lead author.

Interviewing 21 pregnant Filipina women across multiple regions of the Philippines in 2021, Chua and her team sought to understand how these women internalized such stressors. They found that they used creative coping strategies, some of which are grounded in Filipino cultural practices and shaped how they navigated such uncertainties. Some reframed difficult circumstances and maintained a positive outlook, while others deliberately disengaged from political stressors and focused instead on the well-being of their families.

According to Chua and her coauthors, previous research had been limited in that it did not address how pregnant individuals perceive and embody outside stressors and the implications for health. Nor did it address the various coping strategies they found useful in dealing with stress in order to protect their bodies and pregnancies.

The research team specifically chose to study pregnant women in the Philippines, a country marked by intense state violence, high poverty rates, political corruption, and a highly publicized war on drugs, as well as some of the world’s strictest COVID pandemic lockdown restrictions during the research period.

Their interviews with the pregnant women revealed how interconnected social, political, and economic stressors can be—with 67% of study participants citing financial stress, 38% indicating access to quality medical care, and 52% saying cultural pressures affected their emotional, physical, and mental well-being.

One of the societal challenges compounding this predicament for citizens of the Philippines is their outsized reliance on social media for gathering news and information—an open portal that has the potential to continuously feed them negative or politicized discourse. According to Chua and her coauthors, 62% of their study participants cited Facebook or other social media sites as their primary source of information, adding that the “news they ingested had a profound impact on their perceived stress levels.”

The interviewees revealed that not all of the negative news they consumed necessarily affected them adversely. Many described relying on creative coping strategies pulled from within their Filipino identity and upbringing.

For example, note the researchers, many expectant mothers found ways to reframe those stressors. One way to accomplish that is through the concept of “community viewing”—comparing oneself to others to determine who might be “doing better.” The realization that others within their circle might actually be relatively worse off (experiencing death, food scarcity, and extreme poverty, for example) allowed them to manage the difficulties of their own situations.

Second, maintaining a positive outlook on life and being able to “laugh things off” gave them a new perspective and renewed state of mind that enabled them to “build resiliency against adversity.”

Another reframing technique many expectant moms found useful was looking toward their relationships with family members and appreciating the positive aspects of their lives. Says one study participant: “We cope by remembering the blessings we have [now] and that are yet to come.”

Chua says that participants also found ways to exercise their own agency, which could manifest in one of three cultural practices. One is disengaging and remaining indifferent or resistant to the news of the day—letting the negative news “go in one ear and out the other,” as one participant described.

A second method is to invoke the mentality of bahala na—a phrase that translates to “whatever happens, happens” and is driven by a belief that God will provide. In other words, they believe that regardless of how difficult things are or how far out of their control the situation may become, these new moms and their families will somehow prevail.

Finally, respondents found outright avoidance to be a surefire way to leave some of those stressors behind and move forward with daily living. Deliberately staying silent—as opposed to engaging in political debates or trying to change others’ political opinions—allowed them to protect themselves against unpleasant, negative, and stressful experiences during pregnancy, the coauthors write. Rather, they focused “on concerns within their immediate control,” such as the current safety and health of their children and the general well-being of their families.

Chua emphasizes that “the intent of the work is not to romanticize what might be viewed as a passive outlook or response, but to investigate the strategies these women have at their disposal to cope and deal with challenging circumstances. Doing so is harmful to the participants and to the field of study.”

“Maternal and fetal health is influenced not only by medical care but also by the broader social and political environment. And politics definitely plays a significant role in shaping perinatal health.”

While these specific coping strategies were utilized by the pregnant Filipina women included in Chua’s study, their insights may extend to any expectant mother living with social, political, and financial stressors.

“Maternal and fetal health is influenced not only by medical care but also by the broader social and political environment,” Chua says. “And politics definitely plays a significant role in shaping perinatal health.”

Chua says the research highlighted how further work is needed to fully understand this interaction, as well as how these coping strategies affect stress biology during pregnancy and its impact on newborn health. “Future study also needs to take into account how helpful or harmful these coping strategies may be,” she adds.

“Our study is one of the first to examine how Filipina women embody politics during pregnancy,” the coauthors wrote. “We expect these findings to contribute to the advancement of women’s health on a local and global level by demonstrating the complexities associated with stress embodiment, management, and its impact on fetal development.”

Source: University of Notre Dame

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Simple ‘scores’ may not capture the complexity of childhood trauma

New research suggests that understanding the specific kinds of adversity people experience, and not just how much, could help transform how schools, clinicians, and correctional systems provide support.

For years, childhood trauma has often been measured with a simple score.

The widely used Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, system assigns points for experiences such as abuse, neglect, parental divorce, substance abuse in the home, and other adversities before age 18. In general, the higher the score, the greater the risk for future health and behavioral problems.

But new research from Iowa State University professors Carl F. Weems and Amie Zarling suggests that score may not tell the whole story.

In a study published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, Weems and Zarling surveyed 552 adults on probation or parole in Iowa and found that the specific types of adversity people experience in childhood may be just as important as the total number of hardships they face.

“The question isn’t simply how much adversity someone experienced growing up, but what kind, what they remember and report, and which patterns they experienced,” says Weems, professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State.

Weems says different experiences can shape people’s lives in different ways and may require more individualized responses from the systems designed to help them, adding that “how people respond, report, and remember this past is also shaped by what and how you ask them.”

The ACEs framework emerged from landmark research in the 1990s and includes 10 categories of adversity, ranging from physical abuse and neglect to parental separation, household substance abuse, and mental illness.

The framework’s appeal, Weems and Zarling says, has traditionally been its simplicity. When using ACEs, each adverse childhood experience counts as one point, creating a total score linked to increased risks for depression, addiction, and chronic disease in adulthood.

But that simplicity may also be a limitation, the researchers say.

In their new study, Weems and Zarling instead drew from an expanded traumatic events and adverse childhood experiences framework—also known as TRACEs—that was previously developed by Weems to help incorporate broader trauma, risk and protective factors into childhood adversity models.

In doing so, Weems and Zarling says they hoped to capture a fuller, more nuanced picture of TRACEs by expanding their analysis to include other traumatic events such as bullying, living in an unsafe neighborhood, disasters, accidents, and foster care placement.

“Our goal was to integrate emerging neuroscience on memory of TRACEs and advanced statistical modeling to move beyond counting childhood hardships and better understand the distinct ways different types of adversity affect people later in life,” says Zarling, professor and chair of Iowa State’s department of human development and family studies.

“While two people may have the same ACE score, they may have arrived at that score through very different experiences,” says Zarling, who notes researchers have increasingly questioned whether different experiences should be lumped together into a single score.

“A child exposed to chronic emotional neglect may face different challenges than a child who witnessed domestic violence or grew up with a parent struggling with addiction,” she says. “And while all three experiences contribute to an ACE score, our research suggests they do not necessarily affect people in the same way.”

When focusing on a total score based only on the traditional ACEs, “we lose information that may be important for understanding risk, resilience and what kinds of support are most likely to help,” Weems adds.

Of the 552 Iowa adults on probation or parole surveyed by Weems and Zarling, more than 95% reported at least one childhood adversity, and the average participant reported 4.6 traditional ACEs along with nearly 10 additional traumatic experiences.

Only 4.7% reported no traditional ACEs at all.

As they analyzed the reported experiences, Weems and Zarling identified 11 distinct categories of adversity: physical and emotional abuse; domestic violence; sexual abuse; household mental illness; household drug and alcohol abuse; physical neglect; parental separation and divorce; emotional neglect; disasters, war and accidents; lack of community safety; and an incarcerated household member.

Importantly, the researchers found that models examining specific types of trauma—for example, factor-based models that identify specific categories of trauma and “formative” models that treat adversity as being built from different experiences rather than reflected by them—consistently did a better job explaining adult outcomes than a simple ACEs total.

“Traditional ACEs sum scores performed the worst,” Weems says. “We found that knowing a person’s specific trauma profile provides more useful information than simply knowing the total number of adverse experiences they endured in childhood.”

The study also examined traits linked to successful rehabilitation, including psychological flexibility, or the ability to adapt to challenges while staying focused on long-term goals.

Across nearly every category of adversity, higher levels of childhood trauma were associated with lower psychological flexibility, and higher levels of coercive control, a pattern of using pressure, threats, or other negative behaviors to influence others.

Weems and Zarling also noted differences between men and women.

Women reported significantly higher levels of sexual abuse, emotional neglect, parental separation, household mental illness, and household substance abuse, while men were more likely to report experiences involving disasters, war or serious accidents.

“These differences mirror prior research showing that women in the justice system often have particularly extensive histories of interpersonal trauma,” Zarling says. “They suggest trauma-informed interventions may need to account for those differences rather than treating all childhood adversity as interchangeable.”

Weems and Zarling says one of the study’s more surprising findings involved men convicted of violent crimes.

Among male participants, those with violent offenses reported substantially higher levels of sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and exposure to disasters, war, and accidents than men whose offenses were limited to substance-related crimes.

“This adds nuance to common assumptions about violence and trauma,” says Weems, who notes the study’s use of a multi-item assessment may have helped identify this unexpected finding.

“Rather than being linked only to physical abuse or family violence, serious offending among some men may also be associated with less-visible experiences such as childhood sexual victimization and emotional deprivation,” he says.

The researchers says their findings have implications beyond the criminal justice system.

For clinicians, a more detailed understanding of childhood adversity could improve treatment planning. For schools and social service agencies, it could help identify children facing specific challenges. And for correctional systems, it could lead to rehabilitation programs tailored to different trauma histories.

“For years, ACEs screening has helped organizations recognize that childhood experiences matter,” says Zarling, who emphasized that the study’s findings don’t mean the original ACEs framework is wrong. “Many of the strongest factors we identified correspond closely to the traditional ACEs categories, but richer assessments could help provide a more complete picture of a person’s history.

“Our findings suggest the next stage of this work may be understanding which experiences matter most, how they interact, what patterns reveal about future needs and how to deploy the more nuanced assessment of TRACEs we used in the study,” she says.

Overall, Weems and Zarling says the study’s broader takeaway is a straightforward one: childhood trauma is rarely a single event and cannot always be captured by a single score.

“Sometimes, what you remember happening, or what you’re willing to report happening, depends on what and how you’re asked,” they says.

Source: Iowa State University

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Exercise rewires liver metabolism differently based on sex

Exercise benefits nearly every part of the body, including the liver and metabolism. But, new research suggests those benefits may not look the same in males and females.

Researchers found endurance exercise altered how liver cells created energy, a process known as the Krebs cycle that happens inside individual cells in the mitochondria. Female rats had more proteins created with the energy cycle, whereas male rats had more proteins modified, or remodeled, by a chemical reaction that triggers the cycle.

“Male and female liver cells adapt to endurance exercise through distinct molecular pathways, which remodels the cellular structures responsible for producing energy. Think of it like female rats generated more proteins, while male rats changed more of their existing proteins,” says lead author Scott Rector, a professor of medicine and of nutrition and exercise physiology, and associate dean for basic sciences and research infrastructure at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

“These are subtle changes in the cellular energy process, and one sex doesn’t necessarily have a ‘better’ modification.”

Rector and his team found that exercise training improved liver health in both sexes—there was reduced liver fat, improved cholesterol use and disposal, and fewer markers of fibrosis, which is a buildup of scar tissue typically seen with liver injury or disease. Males specifically seemed to expel more cholesterol from the body than females.

“Why these different adaptations occur is still unclear, but we plan on investigating how these changes in the cell energy cycle might affect metabolism, which is how the body creates and uses energy,” Rector says.

“Our findings indicate that endurance and consistent exercise improve metabolic ‘machinery.’ What else we could discover may provide more precise and personalized interventions for people with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD.”

MASLD, previously called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, is the most common chronic liver disease, especially as the number of people diagnosed with obesity rises. The most severe forms can lead to cancer or cirrhosis, which can both be fatal.

The research appears in Cell Reports. Additional coauthors are from NextGen Precision Health and the University of Kansas Medical Center, contributed as the co-corresponding author.

Rector’s lab is a member of the NIH-funded Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC), one of the largest efforts to map the molecular effects of exercise across tissues. MoTrPAC is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund through cooperative agreements managed by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases (NIAMS), and National Institute on Aging (NIA).

Source: University of Missouri

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5 tips for a safer Halloween

While a few spooky surprises are part of the fun of Halloween, a little preparation can help families avoid real-life scares.

University of Missouri Extension specialists Maria Calvert, an expert in human development, and Rachel O’Halloran, an expert in nutrition and health, have five tips to help make Halloween safe, healthy, and enjoyable for everyone:

1. Make sure costumes are safe and comfortable

The perfect costume should be creative, comfortable, and safe. Choose outfits that fit properly and are short enough to prevent tripping or snagging on objects. Avoid accessories that could cause injuries and add reflective tape to help children stay visible after dark. Calvert also recommends a costume test run before Halloween to catch potential problems. And at the end of the night? Don’t forget to remove costumes, makeup, and accessories to prevent skin irritation and other hazards.

2. Help first-time trick-or-treaters prepare for the excitement

For little ones, Halloween can be exciting—and a little overwhelming. Calvert suggests practicing the trick-or-treat routine at home, choosing a familiar neighborhood and starting early when possible. Keep expectations flexible and remember that visiting just a few houses can be plenty for a young child experiencing Halloween for the first time.

3. Keep safety in mind while collecting candy

Before heading out, establish a route and review basic safety rules. Young children should be accompanied by an adult, while older children should travel in groups. Stick to well-lit streets, use sidewalks, and cross at designated intersections. Community “trunk-or-treat” events offer another way for families to enjoy the festivities. However they collect candy, be sure to check items before children eat them. When in doubt, throw it out.

4. Remember that not all treats are safe for everyone

Some popular Halloween candies contain ingredients that can trigger allergic reactions, including milk products and gelatin. These ingredients can be especially problematic for children with alpha-gal syndrome, a potentially serious allergy associated with lone star tick bites. Consider offering nonfood treats, such as stickers or small toys, instead of or alongside traditional candy. Displaying a teal pumpkin lets families know nonfood treats are available.

5. Have a plan for the Halloween candy haul

Candy is a big part of Halloween, but enjoying the holiday doesn’t have to mean eating everything in the bucket. O’Halloran recommends serving a balanced meal before trick-or-treating, choosing smaller candy containers and helping children sort their treats afterward. Let kids enjoy a few favorites and save the rest for later.

Source: University of Missouri

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How to protect yourself from AI-powered scams

As artificial intelligence makes online scams more convincing, a cybersecurity expert explains how people can protect their personal information.

Artificial intelligence can make a scammer sound like your boss, your bank, or even someone you love. And as the technology becomes more sophisticated, Prasad Calyam of the University of Missouri says spotting a scam isn’t as simple as looking for spelling mistakes.

Calyam, a professor in Mizzou’s College of Engineering and director of the Artificial Intelligence Education, Research, and Infrastructure Center (Mizzou AERI), explains how AI is changing online security, what information people should keep private, and what steps they can take to recognize scams and protect their accounts:

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Dinosaurs may have chowed down on washed-up seafood

Dinosaurs might have been beachcombers that dined on washed-up seafood, researchers report.

Researchers looked at carbon isotope traces in fossilized teeth and bones from coastal-dwelling dinosaurs and found a signature that could be linked to the consumption of seafood. The work highlights the connections terrestrial and marine ecosystems have had for millions of years.

Storms wash marine matter ashore, which can serve as food sources for land-dwelling animals. This is known as marine subsidization and is particularly common today in coastal ecosystems—especially when land ecosystems yield less food than usual (during droughts, for example).

“As it turns out, what happens in the sea doesn’t stay in the sea,” says Lindsay Zanno, associate research professor at North Carolina State University, head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and coauthor of the study.

“We show that coastal terrestrial organisms in the greenhouse climates of the Cretaceous relied on marine resources to supplement their diets in a similar way that modern organisms do,” says first author Clayton Forster, a geologist at the University of Arkansas.

“We can identify that marine resources are passed along the food chain and incorporated in the minerals of bones and teeth of dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, and fish.”

Plants contain “light” (C-12) and “heavy” (C-13) carbon isotopes. The ratio of these isotopes, expressed as δ13C, is a chemical “fingerprint” that gets passed from food into the body of the consumer. When an animal eats, the δ13C value is incorporated into its tooth enamel with an upward shift in the δ13C value to a value higher than that of its food. This difference is between 11 and 13 parts per thousand in the tooth enamel of living animals.

In dino teeth, however, this difference has been found to be consistently higher, creating a mystery around carbon signatures of dino teeth. Their δ13C values were also higher than expected for animals that solely eat land-growing plants, which have lower δ13C values than most marine plants. If dinos or their prey snacked on marine matter, however, it could explain this discrepancy.

Using powder from fossils found in both previously coastal and landlocked sites, the researchers showed that the δ13C value in fossils from coastal sites was not only higher than from the land-locked fossils, but also was consistent between coastal sites, regardless of latitude or age.

Since the different carbon value was seen in both herbivores and carnivores, the researchers determined that the source of seafood would have to be low on the food chain—and was most likely seaweed.

“Our research clearly demonstrates that climate-driven extinctions in Mesozoic oceans would have had trickle up effects in the terrestrial realm,” says Zanno.

“The study is also an important step in understanding the interconnectedness between ancient animals inhabiting land and sea, which is key to identifying drivers of biodiversity loss during times of past climate change.”

The study appears in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Source: North Carolina State University

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