Page No 245-248
Nisha Vidyasagar and Susan Koshy
Women’s Christian College, Chennai
Parenting a child with a developmental disability is an exhausting task especially
for mothers as they are more involved with care giving. This research examined
the stress and coping experienced by mothers of autistic children (AC) and mothers
of normal children (NC). A quasi-experimental research design was used. The
participants were 25 mothers of AC and 30 mothers of NC having children between
age group of 3 and 12 years. It was hypothesized that mothers of AC would
experience more stress and use less effective coping strategies compared to
mothers of NC. Assessments of mothers were carried out by administration of the
scales in special and normal schools. Stress and Coping were assessed using
Parental Stress Scale and Ways of Coping Questionnaire, respectively. Analysis
was done using t-test and Pearson’s correlation. It was found that mothers of CWA
experience more stress than mothers of NC and they tend to cope by seeking
social support, escaping/avoiding or by positively reappraising the situation more
frequently than mothers of normal children. A significant positive correlation was
found between stress and the use of Confrontative coping in mothers of children
with autism
.