Coping strategy use, personality, and adjustment of parents rearing children with developmental disabilities.
Teach coping skills to dads and address stress-prone personality traits in moms for long-term parent well-being.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team mailed surveys to 91 moms and 67 dads who were raising a child with a developmental delay.
They asked about personality traits, coping styles, and how well parents felt adjusted.
Six years later the same parents filled out the adjustment survey again.
What they found
Mothers who were naturally more anxious or moody stayed less adjusted six years on.
Fathers who used helpful coping plans at time one were better adjusted six years later.
In short: moms were driven by personality, dads by what they actually did.
How this fits with other research
García-López et al. (2016) found the same coping-adjustment link, but showed it works through happy couple relationships.
Greene et al. (2019) extended the idea: when dads use poor coping and services are missing, mental health drops fast.
Gur et al. (2023) reviewed 26 studies and say ACT coaching can teach the very coping skills that helped dads here.
Why it matters
When you coach parents, give moms space to talk about stress reactivity and give dads concrete coping plans.
Add a brief ACT exercise or problem-solving worksheet to your parent training.
Six years of better parent adjustment can start with one targeted session.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Parents rearing children with developmental disabilities encounter stressors that require coping and adaptation. In Glidden et al. 2006, the use of problem-focused coping strategies was more often associated with positive adjustment outcomes than was the use of emotion-focused coping strategies, and parental personality was shown to influence outcomes, with Neuroticism, in particular, associated with lower well-being. METHOD: In the current study we aimed to replicate these results for adjustment outcomes measured 6 years later. Sixty-eight married couples parenting at least one child with developmental disabilities completed measures of depression and subjective well-being, and the Transition Daily Rewards and Worries Questionnaire, an inventory that assesses parental reaction to children transitioning into adulthood. RESULTS: For both mothers and fathers, combinations of personality factors and coping strategies were able to significantly predict outcome variables measured 6 years later. Personality, however, was a better predictor for mothers, whereas coping strategies predicted more variance for fathers. Distancing, especially, demonstrated mother-father differences. CONCLUSIONS: For the most part, the current results demonstrated that the relations among personality, coping and parental outcomes were consistent and stable over the 6-year interval. In addition, although we found some differences between mothers and fathers, there were also many similarities in the frequency of use of different coping strategies, and in the direction of influence of personality and coping strategy on outcome variables.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2009 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2009.01217.x