Women with autistic children are more likely to give up work in the first five years after birth, a new study has found.
Israeli researchers Dr Raanan Raz and Ofir Pinto found having an autistic child may “irreversibly” affect a mother’s career path.
Too hard: the research highlights the difficulty many mothers of children with autism have in trying to resurrect their career
Work comparisons
The researchers discovered that in the year before birth 72.9 per cent of mothers of children with autism were working.
But by the time of the child’s first birthday, the proportion of working mothers fell to 63.6 per cent.
The employment level did not recover, even by the time the child reached the age of five.
In contrast, up to 63.6 per cent of mothers of typically developing children were working in the year before birth.
Following birth, the level of employment fell to 58.7 per cent. But then, five years on, up to 65.1 per cent were in work — which is even higher than the pre-birth level.
‘Help these mothers’
Dr Raanan Raz, whose research found mothers of autistic children are more likely to drop out of the workforce
Raz, an epidemiologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that the “welfare system” should consider how to “help these mothers to get back to the workforce”.
In the UK, charity Carers UK has called for the Government to address the same problem. It is calling for an increase in Carer’s Allowance and for carers to be able to earn more before losing their benefit.
The Israeli research involved almost 238,000 children.
It took in all children with autism or hearing loss born in Israel between 2005 and 2010 and a random 20 per cent sample of typically developing children.
It found that some mothers of children with hearing loss also drop out of the workforce after birth. But almost all returned five years on.
Autism more common among high-earning families
The researchers say autism is more common in Israel among high-earning families.
This may account for why a greater proportion of mothers of children with autism were working before birth than mothers whose children did not have autism.
The higher incidence of autism could relate to the higher-earning families having more access to resources, including diagnosis. The research does not imply that having a job makes mothers more likely to have children with autism as opposed to mothers who stay at home.
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Published: 9 July 2020. Updated 12 July 2020.
