Critical Events in Parenting Handicapped Children

Abstract

To illustrate the influence of various personal and situational variables in fostering particular concerns of parents in rearing their handicapped children, 169 parents of exceptional children were asked to list and rank, in relation to severity, the events they deemed critical in their family history. Using data generated through open-ended questionnaires. 18 Independent categories of critical events were developed and their reliability established through a panel of expert judges. The categorical information resulting was then ranked by frequency. While the global results were indicative of parenting problems in general, reclassifying the data based on several status variables revealed distinctly different patterns of parental concern across several subgroups within the sample. All results were heavily influenced by the severity of the handicaps and the particular disability of the child. Other factors such as social class and sex of the child were also found useful in discerning the events particular parents rated as critical incidences in their family's development.

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