Personality style of fathers of children with autism spectrum disorders and impact on parenting experience

Background:  

Historically, fathers’ parenting experiences have been less studied and findings have varied. Studies have also begun to explore the presence of a broader autism phenotype among family members using measures of ASD symptom presentation.  In contrast, our study uses a dimensional approach to measure personality dimensions among fathers of children with ASD using a standardized measure of personality.  Variability in such personality characteristics is hypothesized to significantly impact fathers’ parenting experiences.

Objectives:

1)      Determine whether fathers of children with ASD exhibited significant differences on five personality dimensions as compared to the normative population.

2)      Identify whether particular personality traits were correlated with parenting stress, marital satisfaction, and maladaptive coping strategies.

Methods:

Participants included fifty-one fathers of children with ASD between the ages of four and nine years old who were married to and living with the biological mother of the child. Participants received measures of personality (NEO-FFI), parenting stress (PSI), coping (WOC), and marital satisfaction (DAS).

Results:

No significant differences were found on any of the five personality dimensions as compared to the standardization population. A bimodal distribution was found for Extraversion while Conscientiousness trended toward higher scores. Fathers also exhibited significantly higher levels of parenting stress and lower marital satisfaction. Extraversion was significantly negatively correlated with parenting stress and positively correlated with marital satisfaction.

Conclusions:

Contrary to expectations, our sample of fathers of children with ASD was not found to exhibit personality dimensions suggestive of a broader autism phenotype. However, most fathers showed extreme scores (either high or low) on a measure of the desire and capacity to socialize (Extraversion), and trended toward more rigid and goal-oriented characteristics (Conscientiousness). Further, fathers also reported high levels of parenting stress and lower marital satisfaction, with fathers with particular personality characteristics at greater risk for these outcomes.