Difficulties of care–work reconciliation: Employed and nonemployed mothers of children with intellectual disability

Abstract

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 flexibility 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.

Keywords:

• care–work reconciliation
• caregiving
• employment
• intellectual disability
• mother

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the research ethics board of the National Yang-Ming University for their careful examination and approval of this study (code number: 990077). Appreciation goes to Tyra Twomey for her editorial assistance. Most of all we would like to thank all the participants who gave up their time and took part in our interviews.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

This paper draws on data collected for a project funded by the National Science Council in Taiwan (NSC99-2621-M-010-001), in collaboration with the WoCaWo project (https://www.jyu.fi/ytk/laitokset/yfi/en/research/projects/wocawo).