Abstract
Although mothers raising children with Intellectual Disability (ID) report poorer mental health than parents raising typically developing children, they also report feelings of positivity; both generally and specific to their child. To date little is known about the function of maternal positivity thus, we explored the putative compensatory and protective functions of maternal positivity, within both a cross-sectional and one-year longitudinal framework that examined the relationship between children’s behaviour and mental health problems with maternal mental health problems. Participants included 135 mothers of children with severe ID who were between 3 and 18 years of age. Multiple linear regression models investigated the potential function of maternal positivity. At a cross-sectional level, maternal positivity was found to be a significant independent predictor of maternal stress and moderated the impact of child behaviour problems on maternal parenting stress. Longitudinally, maternal positivity did not have a direct effect on later parenting stress nor function as a moderator. Findings from our cross-sectional analysis are consistent with the view that positivity serves a compensatory function. Further exploration is needed to understand the longitudinal function of maternal positivity.
Highlights
High quality population-based research data suggest that mothers raising children with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience higher levels of stress and mental health problems compared to other mothers (Emerson 2003; Emerson and Llewellyn 2008; Totsika et al 2011)
This study demonstrates that optimism functioned as a moderator at two time points within the same sample, the results do not determine whether parental optimism, when the child was three, would moderate the impact of child behaviour problems on later parental depression
Research focusing on families raising children with ID has increasingly found that, despite challenges faced, positivity exists within these families
Summary
High quality population-based research data suggest that mothers raising children with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience higher levels of stress and mental health problems compared to other mothers (Emerson 2003; Emerson and Llewellyn 2008; Totsika et al 2011). The question of whether parents are affected negatively by raising a child with ID involves a complex answer: they do face more stress, but they report significant positive outcomes and positive well-being often to the same extent as do other parents (Hastings 2016). It was found that mothers of children with ID who reported higher levels of hope reported lower levels of anxiety, depression and stress. Other positive constructs such as life satisfaction and positive affect have been found to have negative associations with parenting stress and depression (Ekas et al 2010; Lloyd and Hastings 2009)
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