The parental care burden of child disability

Children with a disability require a greater level of care, which may profoundly affect the lives of their parents as their primary caregivers. However, empirical evidence to quantify the parental care burden of child disability remains scarce. This study aims to uncover the extent to which a child’s disability affects the parental care burden by investigating fathers’ and mothers’ time spent on housework and childcare. Exploiting data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and applying propensity-score matching, we compare the individual time fathers and mothers spend on parental care for children with and without a disability, as well as the division of parental care time within couples. Our findings indicate a parental care burden of child disability of an additional 19 minutes per day for fathers and 26 minutes per day for mothers. This extra burden is most significant for mothers of children with a disability aged 0 to 2, with 1 hour and 25 minutes per day. Furthermore, the parental care burden is particularly pronounced in fathers of later birth cohorts, and parents with a lower educational attainment level, with multiple children, or residing in West Germany. While the parental care burden of child disability is disproportionally higher for mothers than fathers, we find no evidence for an association with the division of parental care time within couples. Our study is the first to provide quantitative evidence for the increased parental care burden of child disability from a population perspective, potentially explaining adverse spillover effects on family dynamics and all family members’ wellbeing and health.