Exploring Family Adjustment Among Parents of a Child With a Disability Attending Relationship Education

Abstract

Objective: The current exploratory study examined dyadic changes in family adjustment (i.e., parental stress, positive coping, family-based support, social support) reported by parents of a child with a disability after 12-hours of relationship education (RE). Background: Parents of a child with a disability encounter social barriers that contribute to parental stress and inhibit family well-being. RE reduced psychological and relationship distress in community samples—yet, ability status and the influence on a family's presenting needs/resources are overlooked in previous research. Methods: We extracted a subset of data to examine pre- and post-reports of family adjustment among couples parenting a child with a disability who completed the PREP curriculum. We used structural equation modeling to examine an actor–partner interdependence model for the dyadic association of mean-centered baseline subscale measures of family adjustment and residual change scores for men and women in a relationship post-RE intervention. Results: Actor effects were significant and predicted the amount of residual change for men and women. Significant partner effects existed for male social support and male and female family-based support. Conclusion: Results expand our understanding of RE effectiveness with an understudied subset of parents, those raising a child with a disability. Parents reported improvements in family adjustment and partners influenced one another in terms of family adjustment changes. Implications: Supportive parent programming, such as RE, may be an important consideration for families that include a child with a disability to address the social barriers that tax existing parent and family resources.