Resilience and the course of daily parenting stress in families of young children with intellectual disabilities.
Daily parenting stress rises for moms but not dads of preschoolers with ID—bolstering both parents’ well-being and marital satisfaction protects mothers most.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Casey et al. (2009) followed moms and dads of preschoolers with intellectual disability.
Parents filled out a short diary each day for many weeks.
They rated how stressed they felt and how their child behaved.
What they found
Mothers’ daily stress crept upward as the weeks passed.
Fathers’ stress stayed flat and did not rise.
Resilience helped, but moms and dads drew strength from different things.
How this fits with other research
Cox et al. (2015) looked only at fathers of kids with ID and found their stress was high.
That seems opposite to the flat line seen here, but R studied older kids and used one big survey, not daily notes.
Foody et al. (2015) also compared moms and dads, yet they tracked heart rate and saliva cortisol in autism families.
They showed moms feel more mental stress while dads show more body stress, a pattern that lines up with the diary results.
Harrop et al. (2016) linked rising child repetitive behaviors to rising caregiver stress, hinting that child behavior may drive the mom-only climb seen here.
Why it matters
You can reassure dads that their stress may stay steady, but you must check on moms often.
Boosting each parent’s well-being and their marriage gives the biggest shield to mothers.
When you write behavior plans, add brief parent check-ins so mom gets daily support, not just crisis help.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Parenting stresses have consistently been found to be higher in parents of children with intellectual disabilities (ID); yet, some families are able to be resilient and thrive in the face of these challenges. Despite the considerable research on stress in families of ID, there is still little known about the stability and compensatory factors associated with everyday parenting stresses. METHODS: Trajectories of daily parenting stress were studied for both mothers and fathers of children with ID across child ages 36-60 months, as were specific familial risk and resilience factors that affect these trajectories, including psychological well-being of each parent, marital adjustment and positive parent-child relationships. RESULTS: Mothers' daily parenting stress significantly increased over time, while fathers' daily parenting stress remained more constant. Decreases in mothers' daily parenting stress trajectory were associated with both mother and father's well-being and perceived marital adjustment, as well as a positive father-child relationship. However, decreases in fathers' daily parenting stress trajectory were only affected by mother's well-being and both parents' perceived marital adjustment. CONCLUSIONS: Parenting stress processes are not shared entirely across the preschool period in parents of children with ID. Although individual parent characteristics and high-quality dyadic relationships contribute to emerging resilience in parents of children with ID, parents also affect each others' more resilient adaptations in ways that have not been previously considered.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2009 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2009.01220.x