Families with children with special needs in urban China : stress, functioning, and social support
Date
1998
Authors
Xu, Lingr
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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate stress, functioning and social support of families rearing children with special needs m urban China. Fifty-six parents of elementary school children without disabilities and 62 parents of elementary school children with hearing impairments, visual impairments, or mental retardation m Shanghai, China participated in this study. The participants provided family demographic information and completed three questionnaires. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-tests were used to examine family stress, functioning and social support with regard to group (parents of children with and without handicaps), child's gender, and disability type.
The results are as follows 1) As a whole, parents of children (regardless of child gender) with special needs report statistically significant higher levels of stress than their counterparts whose children do not have special needs, 2) parents of children with mental retardation, in particular, indicate substantially higher levels of stress than parents of children with hearing or visual impairments, 3) there is no evidence to indicate that families with children with special needs function differently from families with children without special needs, 4) Chinese parents received most help from spouse, grandparents of the children, school and school teachers. Chinese parents, especially those of children with special needs, value school and teachers highly in helping raise their children.
Implications for social support are drawn and some limitations of the study also discussed.