The purpose of this study was to examine in which way children with mental retardation were taken care of after school and what their mothers\' needs for after-school programs were. Parents who have mentally retarded children must provide continuing care to them, and they are bound to get exhausted over time. Specifically, mothers whose mentally retarded children attend special school have to spend much more time taking care of them than those with non-disabled children does. Therefore, it\'s attempted to identify what they expected from after-school programs in an effort to improve mentally retarded children\'s physical and mental ability, facilitate their social adjustment, alleviate their families\' psychological and financial burden, and ultimately enhance family function. The subjects in this study were 250 mothers who were randomly selected from among 314 women whose children attended school for the mentally retarded in the city of Daegu that attached importance to after-school programs. When a survey was conducted, the responses from 197 mothers were gathered, and the answer sheets from 179 were analyzed, except for incomplete ones. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS for Windows Ver 10.0 program. After frequency analysis was implemented, statistical data on frequency and percentage were obtained. The findings of this study were as follows： First, the mothers investigated hoped that the government share the expenses for after-school programs with them, or that the programs be funded by the government. They wanted their children to be instructed by professional organizations so that they could receive professional education. Second, the mothers mostly took care of their children after school, and in case there was no person to protect them, they were left to the care of welfare agencies, or they were at home by themselves. This fact indicated that they wanted to take care of their children for themselves or leave them to the care of reliable agencies. The expenses they paid for after-school programs differed with monthly income, as those who had higher income paid more for them. And they spent more money than families with non-disabled children did. Third, general welfare agencies for the disabled were regarded as the best institute to provide after-school care, followed by general social welfare agencies. Teacher qualifications were considered most important, followed by the quality of programs and traffic. This fact implied that the national and local governments should try to help every mentally retarded child gain easier access to diverse after-school programs. And the mothers preferred professional institutes where professional teachers could take care of their children. Fourth, most of the mothers felt the need for after-school programs for mentally retarded children, and wanted their children to receive integrated education along with non-disabled children. This fact suggested that a lot of them found integrated education effective, and programs should be designed to offer integrated education. And they called for a variety of programs about every field, such as social studies, language, cognitive domain, health, physical education, art, music, etc. Fifth, regarding their favorite teacher image, special education teachers with college or higher education was most preferred, and those who would be warm-hearted and took good care of children were considered ideal teachers. Therefore, it\'s required to nurture full-fledged teachers who could provide professional after-school education for mentally retarded children.