Relating stress of mothers of children with developmental disabilities to family-school partnerships.
Strong parent-school partnerships are linked to lower maternal stress, no matter the child’s diagnosis.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team sent a one-time survey to moms of school-age kids with autism, Down syndrome, or other delays.
They asked about stress, how well the family works with the school, child behavior, and how much the mom must fight for services.
What they found
Moms who team up well with teachers feel less stress.
Fewer child behavior problems also lower stress.
When the school listens, moms do less personal advocacy on their own.
How this fits with other research
Bourke-Taylor et al. (2012) looked at the same moms two years earlier. They found mom empowerment and healthy hobbies cut stress more than child traits. The new paper adds that school teamwork is another big lever you can pull.
Dempsey et al. (2009) showed family-centered services lower stress but do not raise parenting skill. Whitehouse et al. (2014) now show school partnership lowers stress without even touching parenting skill. Together they tell us: fix the system around the mom, not just the mom.
Fallahchai et al. (2022) move the lens to couple life. They say talking stress out with a partner and friends protects the marriage. M et al. remind us the school is another key teammate in that support web.
Why it matters
You can trim mom stress without waiting for child behaviors to vanish. Invite teachers to join a shared goal meeting, copy the mom on every positive note, and ask her which battles she wants you to handle. When the school partnership feels real, she can breathe and the whole family wins.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Although mothers of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) experience high levels of stress and schools constitute an important resource, the relation remains unknown between maternal stress and educational services. Responding to a national, web-based survey, 965 mothers of students with disabilities completed a 163-item questionnaire about parent stress. We examined which child, parent, and parent-school characteristics correlated with maternal stress. Mothers with lower stress levels reported better parent-school relationships and low levels of parent advocacy. However, lower stress levels were predominantly shown by mothers with good-to-excellent parent-school relationships (vs. poor-to-fair partnerships) and who engaged in virtually no (vs. any) advocacy activities. Lower maternal stress levels were also noted when children had fewer behavior problems, Down syndrome, and did not have autism. Less stress was also reported by mothers who had not enacted procedural safeguards, were minorities, and rated themselves lower on neuroticism and were more extroverted, dependable, and open to new experiences. This study has important implications for practitioners and researchers.
Intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1352/1934-9556-52.1.13