Father and mother contributions to family functioning when the child has a mental delay

Abstract

Less is known about the father's than the mother's role in family adaptation to children with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships of both father and mother use of coping strategies and perceptions of the child with measws of family functioning style. Subjects were 26 families of Wmonthold children with a mental delay and a comparison group of 26 families of same-aged children with no delay. Functioning style for study families showed a balance of cohesion and adaptability; comparison families were more chaotically flexible on the adaptability scale. Mothers and fathers agreed on family functioning style. Study parents made the greatest use of external coping strategies, while in both p u p s mothers used more external and fathers more internal coping strategies. Relationships between coping and family functioning varied by parent and by group. Results suggest the need for further exploration of the separate needs of fathers and mothers in maintaining balanced family functioning.

How Can Social Capital Become a Facilitator of Inclusion?

“…This was expected since we are examining a group for whom learning is problematic for various reasons. We can also see that the socioeconomic background of the families is lower in the group of students with special educational needs, which corresponds to the patterns of the international and Hungarian literature [68,91,92].…”