Impact of children’s intellectual disability on parents

The family members of children with intellectual disability experience considerable distress due to care giving and other special needs of these children and the interference caused in their day to day life and the occupational responsibilities. The present paper examines the differential effects of children’s intellectual disability on their mothers and fathers. Both mother and father of 30 children diagnosed as having intellectual disability due to significantly sub-average intellectual functioning and impaired adaptive functioning enrolled in a special school were taken for the study. NIMH Disability Impact Scale developed by Peshawaria et al. (2000) was individually administered on each parent. Mean S.D. were computed and compared with student’s t-test. Results suggested that both mother and fathers were affected by the disability however mothers were affected significantly more than the fathers. These results suggest the role of maternal caring and cultural influences in the care-giving role of mothers which might contribute to higher disability impact and stress in mothers of the children with disabilities.