Parents of children with autism earn less and report more disruptions in their work, a new report by the American Academy of Pediatrics found.
An emerging body of work is showing the impact an autism diagnosis has on a family, in part because there aren't enough services and support for this growing population. But researchers are still figuring out the impact. We reported on the strain and higher incidence of anxiety and depression among parents of children with autism in
May.
We learned today that more than twice as many parents, 39 percent, reported quitting, passing on a job or making major changes in a job because of child care issues tied to a child with autism, in a study of parents of 16,282 preschool-age children.
"This effect was 3 times larger than the effect of poverty," the AMA journal Pediatrics reported in an article published today:
"Given the child care arrangements, it seems that parents of children with ASD (autism spectrum disorders) are modifying employment to enable the typical child with ASD to attend school-related services and receive adequate wrap-around care. Doing so, however, must require substantial accommodation, because families with a child with ASD were 7 times more likely to report that child care problems affected employment than comparable families with typically developing children. These accommodations probably result in lower household income." - Pediatrics, July, 2008.
The article highlighted other research:
- "A nationally representative study estimated that households with a child with autism earn 14 percent less income than demographically and educationally comparable households."
- "Fathers of children with autism were less likely to report full-time employment compared with other fathers and were more likely to work part-time."
In the New York Daily News, Jesse Mojica, father of a child with autism, writes about the struggles and blessings of autism in the family.
