Division of Caregiving Responsibilities Among Caregivers of Children with and without ASD

Background:

Parenting children with ASD requires greater demands relative to parenting typically developing children (TD; Ingersoll & Hambrick, 2011) and mothers report increased need for support from family relationships and outside sources compared to normative data (Johnson, Frett, Feetham, & Simpson, 2011). However, literature suggests that parents of children with ASD who are primary caregivers may receive less support from their spouses compared to parents of TD children, even though parenting demands may be greater (Bristol, Gallagher, & Schopler, 1988). Furthermore, Johnson et al. (2011) demonstrated that when mothers and fathers feel their family social support needs do not match their support received, their stress levels increase and mental health worsens in both parents. Social norms around parenting continue to shift, and it is becoming more common for both parents to take equal share of parenting responsibilities.

Objectives:

The current study sought to explore whether primary caregivers of children with ASD receive less support from secondary caregivers compared to primary caregivers of TD children, and whether disagreement exists between primary and secondary caregivers in how often the secondary caregiver is involved in caregiving.

Methods:

The current online study included 67 mother-father dyads of a child with ASD and 48 mother-father dyads of TD children. The Child Caregiving Involvement Scale (CCIS; Wood & Repetti, 2004) is a 10-item questionnaire that assesses perceptions of caregiver responsibility for specific child-care activities. Secondary caregivers were asked to report on their own responsibility and primary caregivers were asked to report on the secondary caregiver’s responsibility. Correlations and paired sample t-tests were conducted to compare the involvement of secondary caregivers reported by primary and secondary caregivers and between ASD and TD groups. Discrepancies were determined as mean differences that exceeded one half standard deviation (as in Tomeny et al., 2018).

Results:

In the ASD group, 15% of secondary caregivers reported they spend less time caregiving relative to their spouse’s report, while 25% reported they did more than their spouse reported. In the TD group, 13% of secondary caregivers reported they spend less time caregiving relative to their spouses’ report, while 18% reported they did more than their spouse reported. There was no significant difference between primary (M=22.78, SD=9.28) and secondary (M=22.25, SD=8.03) caregiver’s report of how much the secondary caregiver shared responsibilities in the ASD group, t(66)=.69, p=.506. Additionally, there was no significant difference in share of responsibilities reported by primary caregivers of children with ASD and primary caregivers of TD children, t(113)=.665, p=.508. Secondary caregivers of children with ASD and TD children also did not differ on their report of shared responsibilities, t(113)=1.476, p=.143.

Conclusions:

Overall, analyses illustrated that secondary caregivers and their spouses were generally in agreement about levels of involvement of secondary caregivers. ASD and control groups did not differ in the amount of caregiving provided by secondary caregivers, regardless of reporter. Although past research has shown negative effects on stress and mental health when caregivers do not agree on shared responsibilities, our results show promise of perceived equality of childcare responsibilities.