Parenting with Assistance – The Views of Disabled Parents and Personal Assistants

Abstract

This qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews with eight parents with disabilities and five personal assistants, explores two different but interrelated perspectives: how parents with extensive physical disabilities use personal assistants in their parenting strategies and how personal assistants experience assisting in parenting strategies. The assistance users’ parenting strategies are affected by gender, age of the children and whether the disabilities were congenital or acquired later in life. The assistants were seen as enablers, competitors for the child’s love or compensators. Access to personal assistance has increased parents’ possibilities to be active in their parenting. However, total adaptation to the assistance user’s parenting strategies could be challenging for assistants with different parenting ideals. There is a need for discussions on how assistants can work to strengthen parenting roles as well as receive support to work in a sustainable way.