Parenting Role's Tasks as Parents of Healthy and Disabled Children

Abstract

Background The purpose of this study was to determine how to do parenting role's tasks as parents of healthy and disabled children younger than 7 years old in Iran (Arak). Materials and Methods In this cross-sectional study, the parenting role tasks questionnaire was completed for 120 parents of healthy children and 120 parents of disabled children with at least one child with disability and the parents were selected by convenience sampling method. T-test, Mann-Whitney test and analysis of variances was used to compare the scores between parents of healthy and disabled children based on studied variables including child age, parent age, child gender, parent education, family economic status, history of trauma and seizure in children was applied to perform the role of parents. Results: There was a significant difference of parent role in both groups of parents. There was observed a significant relationship between role of healthy children's parents and age of child (r=0.21, P=0.016), but not observed in disabled children's parents. In healthy children, there was no significant correlation between parent's role and maternal age. In contrast, in disabled children, there was found a significant difference (P= 0.04) with correlation coefficient of -0.18 representing the inverse relationship. Moreover, no relationship was found between history of seizure and performance of parenting role's tasks in the group of disabled children (P>0.05). Conclusion The performance of tasks of parenting role in two groups of parents of healthy children and disabled ones in four areas of primary care, education, leisure and improving cognitive level had significant difference. This difference in the area of improving the cognitive level was higher. Due to complications of disability, parents of these children pay more attention to other areas of care except of improving cognitive level. Therefore presence of disabled child has negative effect on the balance of the performance of tasks of parenting role in various areas.