A Comparative Study of Parental Stress in Mothers of Autistic and Non Autistic Children

The study was designed to compare parenting stress between mothers with autistic children and the normal group. 90 mothers (45 of autistic children and 45 of normal children), were selected through available sampling; they were matched based on education, child age and socioeconomic status. Then they were assessed by PSI and data was analyzed by MANOVA.Results indicated that mothers of au-tistic children have more parental stress (in both parenting and child domains).Also they experienced too many stre-sses related to child, parent, and co-munity due to unknown etiology of autism, child problems, worry about problem endurance, lack of acceptance by community and even acceptance by other members of family and failure to achieve social support.