ABSTRACT
Although a substantial body of research has acknowledged parent caregivers’ lifelong contributions to developmental disability caregiving, most empirical studies have focused on immediate caregiving outcomes or single caregiving episodes, leaving the lifelong impacts of caregiving largely underexplored. This gap may lead to misinterpretations of parent caregivers’ well-being during and beyond the caregiving experience. To advance this field, this conceptual article integrates the stress process model with life course theory to examine how caring for a child with developmental disabilities shapes parents’ long-term outcomes and life trajectories over time, as well as how parent caregivers actively reframe their caregiving practice through constrained agency. The integrated model introduces six key concepts: macro and historical contexts, linked lives, care stressors and timing, outcomes and cumulative effects, feedback loops over time, and mediators and moderators. The proposed Life Course Care Stress Model offers new directions for mixed-methods and longitudinal research on developmental disability caregiving across the life span.