Parental Stress in Raising a Child with Disabilities in India

Vidya Bhushan Gupta , Priyanka Mehrotra , Naveen Mehrotra
Share:
Articles
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5463/dcid.v23i2.119
Submitted: 2020-09-14 07:20:01
Published: 2012-08-16

Purpose: To determine the parenting stress and its determinants among parents of children with disabling conditions in India.

Methods: The Parenting Stress Index – short form and a few open ended questions were administered to a convenience sample of sixty-six patient families in July, 2009 in the cities of New Delhi and Faridabad regions of Northern India through six non- governmental organizations (NGOs) that serve children with disabling conditions.

Results: Female sex of the child was associated with higher stress related to failure of the child to meet parent’s expectations and to satisfy the parents in their parenting role. Parents engaged in more lucrative and prestigious occupations had more stress than parents engaged in less prestigious and lucrative occupations irrespective of their income. Many parents reported receiving little support from their extended families in taking care of their child. Religion was found to be a common coping resource used by the parents.

Conclusion and Implications: Higher parenting stress in parents of girls raises the possibility of abuse and neglect. Little support from informal family resources underscores the need for developing formal resources for supporting the parents. The specific resources of parenting stress among parents of different socioeconomic status should be explored in future studies so that appropriate interventions can be planned.

Keywords

Parenting stress Childhood disability

Authors

Vidya Bhushan Gupta

Dr. Vidya Bhushan Gupta is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at New York Medical College and Medical Director of Hudson Valley Developmental Disabilities Services Organization, an agency that provides medical and custodial care to over 1000 persons with intellectual disability. He is a neuro-developmental pediatrician who has served on various committees of the American Academy of Pediatrics and has written books, "Autisitc Spectrum Disorders in Children" and "No Apologies for Ritalin."

Priyanka Mehrotra

Priyanka Mehrotra is a graduate of New York University with a strong interest in public health. She is currently a medical student at the University of Miami in the MD/ MPh track.

Naveen Mehrotra

Dr. Naveen Mehrotra is a pediatrician in private practice who completed his medical training from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his Pediatric training at the University of Chicago. Dr. Mehrotra helped found the Shri Krishna Nidhi (SKN) Foundation, a community based non-profit organization with a mission to promote well-being through community based education and has also been a key person in the founding of the South Asian Total Health Initiative (SATHI), a research and education based initiative at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey- Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

How to Cite

Vidya Bhushan Gupta, Priyanka Mehrotra, Naveen Mehrotra (2012-08-16). Parental Stress in Raising a Child with Disabilities in India. Disability, CBR & Inclusive Development, Vol. 23 No. 2 (2012): Summer, 41-52. https://doi.org/10.5463/dcid.v23i2.119

Download Citation

License

Copyright © 2012 The Author(s)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

View License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution License By-NC-ND 4.0  that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See  The Effect of Open Access ).

Similar Articles

1-10 of 401

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.