Purpose:  Caring for children with physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy could have negative effects on the mothers who are usually the primary care givers. Information on the Quality of Life (QoL) of mothers of children with Cerebral Palsy (CP) in Nigeria is not readily available. This study hence compared the QoL of mothers of children with CP with that of age-matched controls.

Relevance: The study’s outcome draws attention to unappreciated impact of caring for children with CP on their Nigerian mothers.

Participants: The cross-sectional survey involved 40 mothers of children with CP with age range of 23 -35 years and 40 age-matched mothers of children without CP.

Methods: Participants were recruited through purposive sampling. Quality of life was assessed using World Health Organization Quality of Life –Bref (WHOQOL-Bref) or its Yoruba translated version.

Analysis: Data were summarized using mean and standard deviation and further analyzed using Mann-Whitney U test with alpha level set at 0.05.

Results: Seventy-one percent of participants were Christians, 65 .0 % had at least secondary school education and 51.0 % were engaged in unskilled occupation. There was no significant difference (p = 0.14) between the mean age of mothers of CP children (30.53 ± 3.65 years)  and the controls (29.33 ± 3.55 years).Mothers of children without CP had higher scores than mothers of children with CP in the overall QoL, overall health perception, and all domain scores of the WHOQOL-Bref.  There was however no significant difference between the two groups’ overall QoL (p = 0.11), overall health perception (p = 0.23) and all the domain scores (p >0.06).

Conclusion: Caring for a child with CP did not have significant impact on their mothers’ QoL though mothers of children with CP scored lower than controls in all QoL domains.

Implication: There is a need to prevent or at least reduce the incidence of CP in Nigeria. In the interim government policies aimed at augmenting the QoL of mothers of children with CP should be initiated.

Keywords: caregivers, cerebral palsy, quality of life.