Parents of children with Down Syndrome: Do resilience and social support matter to their experience of carer stress?

Abstract

The study investigated personal resilience influences on the relationship between social support and parenting-stress among parents of children with Down syndrome (DS) in a Nigerian sample. One hundred and ninety three parent-carers of children with DS participated in the study (mothers = 59%; mean age = 46.47, age range = 21 to 67, SD = 10.42). The parent-carers responded to the measures of parenting-stress, perceived social support, and resilience. The result of the moderated multiple linear regression showed that parents with high social support and resilience have lower level of parenting-stress. Higher personal resilience significantly moderated the relationship between social support and parenting-stress so that parent-carers with low level of social support and higher personal resilience had lower level of parenting-stress. Resilience and social support oriented therapy appears to have efficacy for helping parent-carers of children with DS to manage their stress arising from raising such children.

Keywords:

• Down Syndrome
• parenting-stress
• resilience
• social support

Authors’ note

This research work was not funded by any governmental or non-governmental agencies. MCCO, LIU, PCM, and CO (the authors) conceptualised, designed, and carried out the paper. MCCO and CO primarily wrote the manuscript with meaningful contribution from LIU and MP. MCCO lead the data analysis and interpretation. All the authors read the manuscript and made necessary corrections and useful contributions and agreed to its submission. We thank the principals, teachers, and parents of the children with DS that participated in this study. We thank all the research assistants for their contributions with regard to distribution of the questionnaires.