Parental stress attributed to family members with and without disability: A longitudinal study

Abstract

In this longitudinal study, stress attributed by parents to their family member with intellectual disability was investigated over a period of seven years in relation to specific foci of parental worry, and also in relation to stress attributed to the youngest sibling without a disability. The stress parents attributed to their family member with a disability was about double that attributed to the youngest sibling without a disability. However multiple regression analysis revealed that the stress attributed to the sibling without a disability actually accounted for most of the variance in explaining the stress attributed to the family member with a disability. It is concluded that the stress attributed to any specific child may be an indicator of more general family stress. It was also found that, while the strength of parental worry decreased from time 1 to 2, the pattern of worries did not change over time, and nor did the specific foci of worry differentiate low-stressed from high-stressed parents. It is suggested that the latter result may be due to the inadequacy of the specific foci to cover all sources of parental stress over the duration of the study