Brief report: Psychological effects of parenting stress on parents of autistic children

✍ Scribed by Lucille C. Wolf; Samuel Noh; Sandra N. Fisman; Mark Speechley

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 446 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1573-3432
• DOI: 10.1007/bf02212727

✦ Synopsis

Literature on life stress indicates that among many potentially threatening events and life circumstances, those characterized by their magnitude, intensity, duration, and unpredictability tend to constitute the most stressful situations (Rabkin & Streuning, 1976). The conditions associated with parenting autistic children appear to provide all the characteristics to produce life stress.Numerous empirical investigations have suggested that parenting developmentally handicapped children may have an adverse impact on parents' well-being . The stresses of parenting these children include prolonged dependency and demands for special care , disappointments with delayed developmental milestones , and worry regarding future self-sufficiency . Delayed or forfeited parents' goals , isolation from family and friends , and the unpredictable, ambiguous nature of autism are important sources of life stress that impose physical and emotional strains on parents exceeding levels ex-tThis research was supported by a grant from the