Life Course Dynamics in the Health of Mothers Raising Children with Serious Conditions

Although raising children with serious conditions is known to be associated with poorer parental well-being, recent research following a life course perspective highlights how these associations accumulate over time. Expanding this perspective on long-term dynamics of this parental experience, this study examined how three conceptualizations of the "intensity" of this parental role-caregiving duration, cumulative transitions into this role, and the number of affected children-shaped maternal physical health in midlife. Fixed-effects modeling of panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (n = 8,305) revealed that all three dimensions significantly predicted poorer maternal physical health, with particular salience for cumulative transitions and the number of affected children. These associations were generally weaker when mothers had higher income or greater labor force participation, although such buffering effects applied more consistently to labor force participation and specifically to repeated transitions and mothers of two (vs. one) affected children.