Enabled or disabled? Working parents of disabled children and the provision of child‐care (original) (raw)
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Parenting with Assistance – The Views of Disabled Parents and Personal Assistants
Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 2021
This qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews with eight parents with disabilities and five personal assistants, explores two different but interrelated perspectives: how parents with extensive physical disabilities use personal assistants in their parenting strategies and how personal assistants experience assisting in parenting strategies. The assistance users' parenting strategies are affected by gender, age of the children and whether the disabilities were congenital or acquired later in life. The assistants were seen as enablers, competitors for the child's love or compensators. Access to personal assistance has increased parents' possibilities to be active in their parenting. However, total adaptation to the assistance user's parenting strategies could be challenging for assistants with different parenting ideals. There is a need for discussions on how assistants can work to strengthen parenting roles as well as receive support to work in a sustainable way.
The present study examined the dynamic and complex nature of raising children with disabilities focusing on the processes that mothers went through as they came to embrace their children within their family life context over time. Narratives of parenting experiences were obtained via in-depth interviews of eleven mothers whose children were at different ages, ranging from 6 to 35. Their narratives showed that the process of embracing the child's disability is gradual. Many mothers in this study were fully aware of their children's limitations but at the same time, looking for better ways to support them. As mothers mature in their roles as caregivers and are able to transform their perspectives through a deliberate reflective process, their children can also become partners with their mothers and self-advocates who seek to take charge of their own lives in the midst of life challenges. The findings in this study pointed to the importance of a process-oriented approach with a strength-based focus while considering contextually rich family dynamics and how they change over time.
Párbeszéd: Szociális munka folyóirat
Background: A child’s disability changes the family and has an impact on the quality of life of all its members. Consequently, the family’s needs change as well, especially when it comes to their need for support. Goal: The goal of this study was to map how families with children with disabilities perceive the usefulness of the sources of formal and informal support in the context of family needs, as very important feedback for social work and social policy as major actors in formal support. Methods: The study was conducted using a quantitative research strategy. The relevant data was acquired using two standardized questionnaires – The Family Support Scale (FSS) by authors Dunst, Jenkins and Trivette (1984) and The Family Needs Survey by authors Bailey and Simeonsson (1988). The sample of respondents was comprised of 493 parents of children with disabilities, out of which there was a much larger number of women – mothers (N= 427) than men – fathers (N= 66). Results: The results of ...
Work and Family Encyclopedia working hours in unpredictable ways, and special education arrangements must be established and updated (Brown and Clark 2017; Earle and Heymann 2011). Necessary supportive community resources that help facilitate work-life integration are usually tailored for families of children with typical development (Brennan et al. 2016; Rosenzweig and Brennan 2008). As a result, employers may lose the benefit of these parents' valuable experience, knowledge, and skills when families cannot marshal the supports they need to take care of their children with disabilities while maintaining their employment (
Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, 2012
Background Whether employed and nonemployed mothers of children with intellectual disability (ID) have different experiences with reconciliation between care and work has rarely been explored. Method A survey was conducted in a county in Taiwan and 487 mothers aged younger than 65 and having a child with ID were interviewed face to face at their homes to explore whether there are different factors related to the reconciliation between care and work among employed and nonemployed mothers. Results Except for the common ground of mothers ' health and care demands, logistic regression revealed work fl exibility and care support were important for employed mothers. In contrast, the success of reconciliation for nonemployed mothers was determined by their individual characteristics (i.e., age, marital status, family income). Conclusions Reconciliation policies for mothers with different employment statuses need to use different strategies.
Journal of Child and Family Studies, 2015
The present study examined the dynamic and complex nature of raising children with disabilities focusing on the processes that mothers went through as they came to embrace their children within their family life context over time. Narratives of parenting experiences were obtained via in-depth interviews of eleven mothers whose children were at different ages, ranging from 6 to 35. Their narratives showed that the process of embracing the child's disability is gradual. Many mothers in this study were fully aware of their children's limitations but at the same time, looking for better ways to support them. As mothers mature in their roles as caregivers and are able to transform their perspectives through a deliberate reflective process, their children can also become partners with their mothers and self-advocates who seek to take charge of their own lives in the midst of life challenges. The findings in this study pointed to the importance of a process-oriented approach with a strength-based focus while considering contextually rich family dynamics and how they change over time.