Home, Work, and Care: Working from Home and Parental Wellbeing in Families Raising Children with Disabilities

Parents of children with disabilities face substantial challenges balancing paid work and caregiving, often reporting lower wellbeing and more constrained employment opportunities. Yet little is known about how work arrangements may mitigate these negative spillovers. Using novel data from the 2024 Familles et Employeurs (FamEmp) survey, this study investigates whether working from home (WFH) moderates the expected difference in subjective wellbeing (SWB) between French parents with and without a child with a disability in a nationally representative sample of working parents. Parents of children with disabilities report significantly lower SWB than other working parents. The association between working from home and parental wellbeing varies across family contexts. In du-al-earner households, WFH is associated with higher SWB among parents of children with disabili-ties, narrowing the difference in wellbeing between parents with and without a disabled child. This association is particularly relevant among fathers and among parents of children with more severe disabilities. Moreover, WFH is more effective on wellbeing when it occurs frequently rather than oc-casionally. These findings suggest that flexible work arrangements may help alleviate some of the wellbeing dis-advantages experienced by working parents raising children with disabilities, although these associa-tions appear to depend on household work arrangements and caregiving demands.