Maternal and Paternal Stress in Parenting Children with ASD

Background:  

Extant literature demonstrates that mothers of children with ASD experience consistently higher levels of stress than mothers of typically developing (TD) children. Child variables such as autism symptom severity, age, behavior problems, and cognitive ability may contribute to this stress, though results vary. Research on paternal stress is limited. 

Objectives:  

We examined differences in parenting stress and symptoms of psychopathology between parents of children with ASD and parents of TD children. This is one of the first studies to include an equal number of mothers and fathers, which facilitated an examination of how child variables may differentially affect parenting and psychological stress for both mothers and fathers of children with ASD.     

Methods:  

Participants included the mothers and fathers of 30 cognitively able children with ASD aged between 4.4 and 17.4 years (M=10.50 years, SD=3.97 years) and mothers and fathers of 20 TD children aged between 4.2 and 17.1 years (M=10.58 years, SD=4.95 years). Parenting stress was assessed using the Parenting Stress Index- 4^th Edition (PSI-4), and symptoms of anxiety and depression were assessed with the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and the Beck Depression Inventory-2^nd Edition (BDI-II). In the ASD sample, autism symptom severity, behavior problems, and cognitive abilities were assessed with the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), the Child Behavior Checklist, and the Differential Abilities Scale-2^nd Edition respectively. 

Results:  

Parents of children with ASD did not differ significantly from parents of TD children on measures of anxiety and depression (BAI and BDI-II). However, parents of children with ASD experienced significantly greater parenting stress (PSI-4) than did parents of TD children. Parenting stress for mothers and fathers of children with ASD did not differ. Externalizing behavior problems and autism symptom severity correlated with magnitude of parenting stress overall. While parenting stress did not differ significantly between mothers and fathers of children with ASD based on the age of the child, the specific factors that contributed to this stress did. Results indicated that externalizing behaviors were associated with parenting stress for both mothers and fathers of younger (≤11 years) children. For parents of older children, autism symptom severity correlated only with paternal parenting stress.     

Conclusions:  

Parenting a child with ASD is associated with higher levels of stress than parenting a TD child, but our results illustrated that parents do not experience higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Importantly, though, since both mothers and fathers of children with ASD experience heightened parenting stress, it is crucial to support both parents when treating children with ASD. Our results suggest that the child variables contributing to parenting stress change throughout child development and may be different for mothers and fathers as children get older. These findings also underscore the importance of addressing comorbid externalizing behaviors when treating younger children with ASD as these behaviors lead to stress for parents.