The Impact of Time Use in Different Occupation Areas on Time Deficiency Among Mothers Depending on the Presence of Children With Disabilities.
Jin-Hyuk Bang, Jong-Sik Jang, Byeong-Jin Jeon and 1 others
Mothers of children with disabilities feel significantly more time-pressed than mothers of typically developing children.
Their extra caregiving time comes at the cost of personal care and paid work, and protecting time for basic self-care is associated with feeling less time-pressed.
Key findings
1Mothers of children with disabilities spent 148.67 min more per day on instrumental activities of daily living, 22.76 min less on basic personal care (eating, hygiene), and 141.05 min less on paid work than mothers of typically developing children.
2Mothers of children with disabilities reported significantly higher time deficiency (3.09 vs 2.61 on a 4-point scale where 4 means 'I always feel like I don't have enough time').
3Among mothers of children with disabilities, each additional minute spent on basic personal care was associated with a 0.004-point lower time deficiency score (p < 0.001); no occupation area significantly predicted time deficiency among mothers of children without disabilities.
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What it does not show
Cross-sectional, one-day time diary: you cannot tell whether the time-pressured mothers are getting worse or whether the pattern is stable, and a single weekday may not capture weekend caregiving demands. Time deficiency is measured with a single 4-point item, so the 'outcome' is a very coarse snapshot of a complex psychological state. Self-selected sample: participants had to read and complete the questionnaire themselves, which may exclude mothers with lower literacy or higher cognitive load. Only 8 children had a genetic syndrome, so findings for that subgroup are not interpretable. All participants are from the Seoul Capital Area in South Korea; the pattern may not generalise to other countries, rural settings, or different disability-service systems. The regression is correlational: it shows that ADL time and time deficiency move together, not that one causes the other.
Declared interests
No funding was received and the authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the regression result as showing that giving mothers more time for personal care will reduce their time pressure. The association is correlational and cross-sectional: it may simply be that mothers who feel less time-pressed have more capacity to eat properly and shower, or that a shared factor (for example, having a reliable helper) drives both. The study does not test any intervention, so it cannot tell you that a specific OT programme will change these numbers.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →