Parenting Stress and Social Support in Hearing Mothers of Deaf and Hearing Children: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

This longitudinal study investigated the impact of child deafness on mothers' stress, size of social networks, and satisfaction with social support. Twenty-three hearing mothers of deaf children and 23 hearing mothers of hearing children completed a series of self-report questionnaires when their children were 22 months, 3, and 4 years old. When children were 22 months, more mothers of deaf children reported pessimism about their children's achieving self-sufficiency and concerns about their children's communication abilities than did mothers of hearing children. When their children were 3 and 4 years old, mothers of deaf and hearing children did not differ in their reports of general parenting stress, as measured by the Parenting Stress Index (PSI). Likewise, mothers' ratings of satisfaction with social support were not affected by child deafness, nor did they change developmentally. Mothers of deaf and hearing children did differ in the types of support networks utilized. Mothers of deaf 22-month-olds reported significantly larger professional support networks, while mothers of hearing children reported significantly larger general support networks across all child ages. Mothers' feelings of stress and satisfaction with social support were very stable across the 2 years examined. The results suggest that most mothers of deaf children do not feel a high level of general parenting stress or dissatisfaction with their lives and support networks. However, mothers of deaf children are likely to feel stress in areas specific to deafness. In addition, because parenting stress was highly stable, special efforts should be made to intervene when mothers of deaf children are expressing high levels of stress.

Everyday problems and stress faced by parents of children with cochlear implants.

“…In the current study, 16.1% (n ϭ 5) of parents scored at or above the clinical cutoff for the total PSI/SF score. In comparison with previous studies examining parental stress level of parents of children who are deaf, not specifically children with CIs, this figure was lower than that reported by Meadow-Orlans (1994) and higher than those reported by Pipp-Siegel et al (2002) and Lederberg and Golbach (2002). The relatively late age of the children at diagnosis (due to the lack of early hearing detection and intervention in British Columbia at the time of the study) may affect parental stress scores (Pipp-Siegel et al, 2002).…”

“…In previous studies, a significant positive association between stress and child age has also been reported (Konstantareas & Lampropoulou, 1995;Lederberg & Golbach, 2002;Pipp-Siegel et al, 2002). One possible explanation is that children who were diagnosed late and who received an implant at an older age demonstrated less satisfactory speech and language outcomes, which led to increasing difficulties in establishing effective interactions with their parents.…”

“…Previous studies demonstrated that parental stress had both a direct and an indirect effect on parents' life satisfaction (Hintermair, 2004;Lederberg & Golbach, 2002) and psychological adjustment (Quittner et al, 1991). In sum, the present study examined the following questions: …”

Satisfaction with Life among Mothers of Pediatric Cochlear Implant Candidates: The Impact of Implant Operation and Sociodemographic Factors

“…This supports the reported relation of employment status, occupational competence, role overload, number of children, and social support to health and life satisfaction of mothers [34] . Hence, our findings emphasize the importance of implementing family-centered intervention programs with close attention to the emotional experiences of mothers, the availability of the support networks, and the level of occupational competence alongside consideration of efforts to enhance family relationships or increase awareness and perceptions of the available support [2,7,34] . Notably, incorporating parents as inalienable members in the rehabilitation process and considering individual needs and family dynamics via persistent and long-term multi-dimensional auditory-verbal intervention program and counseling were shown to be associated with positive effects in a past study among hearing-impaired children's parents in Turkey [35] .…”

“…Early childhood hearing loss has been associated with unique and long-term challenges for parents in terms of communication difficulties, medical care, and academic problems [6,7] . Thus, parenting a child with hearing disability is accompanied with increased stress levels among both parents, where mothers are considered to be particularly prone to increased stress due to high level of responsibility in attending appointments, managing hearing devices, and provision of home care and therefore considered to develop different ways of coping strategies as compared to fathers [2,[8][9][10] .…”