A Comparative of Parenting Stress In Mothers of Boy Children with Mental Retardation, Blindness, Deafness, and Sensory Motor Disabilities

This study has been conducted to investigate the parenting stress in Exceptional boy Children Mother's (ECMs) with mental retardation, blindness, deafness, and physical disabilit ies. With a causal-effect research design using multi-phases cluster sampling method, ECMs (n=352) were selected, which including children with blindness (n=74), physical (n=74), deafness (n=108), and mental retardation (n=96). data were gathered using Abedin`s short form parenting stress index (PSI-SF), and analyzed using analysis of variance. Finding showed that ECMs with blindness disability scored significantly higher on averages of total scores of parenting stress than did ECMs with physical disability. Investigation of parenting stress among the four under study groups showed that 1) ECMs with blindness disability scored significantly higher parenting stress on Parent-Child Dysfunctional Interaction (PCDI) subscale than did ECMs with deafness and ECMs with blindness showed upper score based on PCDI subscale than other three groups; and 2)ECMs with blindness disability scored significantly higher parenting stress on difficult child (DC) subscale than did ECMs with physical disability, and ECMs with blindness showed upper score based on DC subscale than other three groups. Although, previous studies revealed that ECMs scored higher on parenting stress than did normal children mother's (NCMs), but this study with focus in four ECMs groups showed that ECMs with blindness disability in comparing with three other groups encounter with higher levels of parenting stress in two PCDI , and DC subscales.