Accessing Support for Parenting Among Parents Living With Disabilities: A Mapping Review of Qualitative Research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Parenting requires complex physical, cognitive, and emotional skills, and for parents with disabilities, these demands are intensified by barriers such as physical limitations, fluctuating health, and insufficient tailored support. Although societal attitudes have shifted to some extent, parents with disabilities often encounter stigma, systemic inequities in child welfare systems, and significant challenges in accessing parenting‐specific support services. Despite growing recognition of the rights of parents with disabilities, limited research has focused on their experiences accessing professional parenting support services. This mapping review aimed to explore the existing literature addressing the experiences of parents living with disabilities with regard to accessing professional support services related to parenting. The mapping review included qualitative studies published in peer‐reviewed journals. From 26,179 initial records, 209 studies met the inclusion criteria. Findings reveal significant growth in research on parenting with disabilities, with a focus primarily on Western contexts and specific populations, such as parents with mental health challenges, substance use disorders, or intellectual disabilities. While all 209 studies included participant quotes related to accessing support services for parenting, only 5.7% of studies had specific aims related to understanding parents’ experiences of accessing professional support or services directly related to the parenting role. Most studies lacked methodological specificity, often employing generic qualitative approaches without alignment with theoretical frameworks. Despite an increasing number of publications, the review highlights critical gaps, particularly the underrepresentation of non‐Western cultural contexts and diverse disabilities. Future studies should prioritize understanding the experiences of accessing professional support and services for parenting and the needs of parents with disabilities across broader disability types, parenting tasks, and cultural settings. These findings underscore the need for targeted policies and practices to create inclusive support systems for parents with disabilities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.035 | 0.072 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.014 | 0.018 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".