J. Jill Suitor

About

Dr. J. Jill Suitor is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Associate of the Center on Aging and the Life Course at Purdue University. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1985. Her research focuses on interpersonal relations and well-being, with particular emphasis on relationships between parents and adult children, among adult siblings, and within the context of family caregiving. She is especially interested in studying these processes in the context of family caregiving. Dr. Suitor's work has been supported by prominent institutions such as the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Spencer Foundation. She has contributed to the academic community through the publication of more than 140 journal articles and book chapters. Her editorial roles include serving as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Innovation in Aging and as an Associate Editor of The Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, both sponsored by the Gerontological Society of America and published by Oxford University Press. She has also served as a standing member of the NIH Study Sections on Social Sciences and Population Studies and on Personality, Social Psychology, and Interpersonal Processes. Since 2001, Dr. Suitor has led the Within Family Differences Study (WFDS), an NIH-supported, three-wave mixed-method panel investigation involving more than 550 multigenerational families. Her teaching includes graduate…

Research topics

• Psychology
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Demography
• Gerontology
• Developmental psychology

Selected publications

• Multigenerational social support in the face of the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 pandemic

  Journal of Family Theory & Review · 2020 · 114 citations

  Research documents high levels of instrumental, financial, and expressive support exchanges within multigenerational families in the 21st century. The COVID-19 pandemic poses unique challenges to support exchanges between the generations; however, the pandemic may provide opportunities for greater solidarity within families. In this review, we draw from theoretical perspectives that have been used to study family relationships to understand the implications of the pandemic for multigenerational…

  DOI

• Understanding and Addressing Older Adults’ Needs During COVID-19

  Innovation in Aging · 2020 · 46 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Four months have passed since the World Health Organization (WHO) identified coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a public health emergency, and 3 months since it declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic. WHO posted guidelines to reduce the spread of COVID- 19, including isolating those with the virus, quarantining those exposed to the virus, and social distancing. These guidelines have been adopted across the globe, and there is evidence that following these guidelines slows transmission…

  DOI

• The Caregiver Identity in Context: Consequences of Identity Threat From Siblings

  The Journals of Gerontology Series B · 2020 · 18 citations

  OBJECTIVES: Although siblings represent central members of the networks of caregivers and their parents, there has been limited attention to how siblings affect one another's well-being during caregiving. In this article, we draw from theories of identity and stress to examine the impact that siblings have on caregivers' psychological well-being. Specifically, we employ a mixed-methods approach to explore whether caregivers' perceptions that their siblings are critical of the care they provide t…

  DOI

• How gender shapes sibling tension in adulthood following parental death

  Journal of Marriage and the Family · 2023-12-01 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Objective: This study investigates gender differences in the effect of parents' deaths on sibling tension among bereaved adult children. Background: Previous scholarship on adult sibling relations following the deaths of parents presents inconsistent results. These disparate findings may stem from past studies not taking into consideration the gender of both the deceased parent and the bereaved child. Method: Analyses are based on three harmonized waves of quantitative and qualitative data colle…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What Motivates Physicians to Address Caregiver Needs? The Role of Experiential Similarity

  Journal of Applied Gerontology · 2023-01-20 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  Despite the significant stress of family caregiving, caregivers’ needs and risks are often overlooked in healthcare settings. This study examined the factors associated with primary care physicians’ perceived responsibility to identify and address caregiver needs and risks. Using a national random sample of U.S. primary care physicians ( N = 106), multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine associations of physicians’ perceived responsibility to assess caregivers’ needs…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Within-Family Differences Study-Bereavement

  NIH · $756k · 2019–2021

• NIH Grant R01AG018869

  NIH · $3.2M · 2014

Frequent coauthors

• Karl Pillemer

  Cornell University

  95 shared

• Megan Gilligan

  University of Missouri

  94 shared

• Marissa Rurka

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  38 shared

• Jori Sechrist

  McMurry University

  20 shared

• L Mohebbi

  John Marshall Law School

  19 shared

• N Mundell

  Ball State University

  19 shared

• Linda V. DeCherrie

  18 shared

• Alex D. Federman

  Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

  18 shared

Awards & honors

• Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Innovation in Aging
• Associate Editor of The Journal of Gerontology: Social Scien…

Similar researchers at Purdue University

• Kenneth Ferraroh-62
• Scott Feldh-44
• Joshua Doyleh-39