The impact on Iranian mothers and fathers who have children with an autism spectrum disorder.
Iranian moms feel more autism stress than dads, but shared care and relatives at home soften the hit.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Laugeson et al. (2014) asked Iranian mothers and fathers of children with autism to fill out surveys. They wanted to see who felt more stress and what family habits helped.
The team looked at education level, child behavior problems, and whether relatives lived in the home.
What they found
Mothers reported higher stress and lower well-being than fathers. The gap was biggest when parents had less schooling and when kids showed more behavior issues.
Sharing care tasks and living with extended family softened the stress for both parents.
How this fits with other research
Samadi et al. (2014) surveyed the same Iranian families in the same year. They also found mothers felt more strain than fathers, showing the pattern is stable.
Davis et al. (2008) saw the same mother-father split in U.S. toddlers years earlier. The match tells us the gender gap crosses cultures and child ages.
Alhuzimi (2021) later tested Saudi parents during COVID-19. Routine loss and fewer services raised stress above the level seen in Iran, proving the original stress finding still holds when life gets harder.
Why it matters
When you assess an Iranian family, expect mom to carry the heavier emotional load. Ask about shared caregiving and relatives in the home; these buffers are easy to overlook. Boosting joint routines and extended-family help can be low-cost ways to lower stress while you work on child goals.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: To date, most research with families who have a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been undertaken in English-speaking countries. Increased levels of stress allied with poorer health have been commonly reported for mothers, with less attention paid to fathers. This study aimed to document the personal impact on Iranian mothers and fathers and identify the correlates of increased stress and poorer emotional well-being. METHOD: In all, 103 parents (58 mothers and 45 fathers) from 74 families who had a child with ASD volunteered to take part in the study. Each participant completed through interview, standardised rating scales of parenting stress, emotional well-being and family functioning as well as rating their child's autistic symptoms, including stereotyped behaviours. RESULTS: Mothers had significantly higher scores than fathers on measures of stress and emotional well-being. Although these variables were highly correlated, binary logistic regression identified that the poorer health was also associated with lower educational levels of the parents, more behavioural problems with the child and fewer autistic symptoms overall. A similar regression analysis of stress scores identified no gender differences but found that lower stress was associated with mothers and fathers who were joint caregivers and when the family lived with relatives. CONCLUSIONS: Iranian parents experience broadly similar responses to parents in other countries, which suggests that the impact of ASD outweighs any cultural differences that might otherwise be present in parental responses to caring for children. In common with families internationally, these parents are likely to benefit from opportunities to become better informed about ASD and the management of their child at home allied with increased support from families and friends.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2014 · doi:10.1111/jir.12005