Date of Completion

2021

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Health Sciences

Thesis Type

Honors College

First Advisor

Victoria Priganc

Second Advisor

Kris Winston

Third Advisor

Susan Kasser

Keywords

inflammatory arthritis, mothers, chronic condition, arthritis, parental disability, fatigue

Abstract

Research suggests there is limited information surrounding how fatigue and parental disability impact the occupation of mothering. A woman’s dual role of mother and patient is rarely addressed, presenting unique parenting challenges and greater disability. The primary objective of this study was to explore the relationship between fatigue and mothers with inflammatory arthritic conditions comparatively to mothers without chronic conditions. Secondarily, the purpose of the study was to utilize the parental disability index and qualitative questions to examine further the impact of being a mother with an inflammatory rheumatological condition. Seventy-one mothers between the ages of 22-48 participated in the study in either the inflammatory group (n=38) or the non-inflammatory group (n=31). A mixed-methods analysis was used on the qualitative open-ended question responses to further understand statistically significant quantitative analyses. Two main findings emerged, mothers with inflammatory rheumatological conditions experienced greater fatigue than women without inflammatory arthritis (z=4.765, p<0.0001), and there was a relationship between fatigue and perceived parental disability in mothers with inflammatory rheumatological conditions (rs =0.460, p<0.0001). Findings from this study highlighted the disproportionate impact of fatigue and parental disability for mothers with inflammatory arthritic conditions and the barriers they face to their everyday occupation of mothering.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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