The Relationship Between Parental Rearing Stress, Parenting Style And Social Behavior Of Children With Moderate And Heavy Mental Retardation

Family environment is one of the main factors affecting the development of children. Parenting stress and parenting style are related to the development of children closely. Some studies of parenting stress and parenting style had been reported in foreign countries. Existing research shows that the special children’s parents experience high levels of parenting stress. In our country, the researches on the relationship between metal retarded children’ parenting stress and parenting style are relatively few, the researcher about the influence of parenting stress and parenting styles for special children’ social development has not yet been reported. Therefore this research adopted the method of combining the questionnaire and experiment,investigated 90 mental retarded children and their parents to study the basic characteristics of parenting stress and parenting styles, to study the relationship among parenting stress, parenting style and mental retarded children’ social behavior.Basic on this research, we can conclude that:1) Mental retarded children’ parents experienced some degree of parenting stress,and mothers’ stress was significantly higher than fathers’.2) Mental retarded children’ parents adopted democracy parenting style mostly.Fathers’ score of indulgent parenting style was significantly higher than mothers’.There was a significant sex difference on authoritarian parenting style, the score of the girl’s parents was higher than the boy’s parents.3) The development of the peer interaction ability and pro-social behavior of mental retarded children was increasing within a certain age, falling at the age of 13 to15, but no significant sex difference.4) The parenting stress score and the score of each dimension were positively correlated with spoiling,indulgent,authoritarian and inconsistent parenting, negatively related with democracy parenting.The parenting stress score and the score of each dimension could significantly positive predict spoiling,indulgent,authoritarian and inconsistent parenting, could significantly negative predict democracy parenting.5) Parenting stress could significantly negative predict mental retarded children’initiative of association, parenting stress could significantly negative predict the democracy parenting style, the democracy parenting style played total mediating effect between parenting stress and the initiative of association factor of peerinteraction.6) The dysfunctional interaction factor of parenting stress could significantly negative predict mental retarded children’ cooperation behavior, the dysfunctional interaction factor of parenting stress could significantly positive predict the inconsistent parenting style, the inconsistent parenting style played total mediating effect between dysfunctional interaction and cooperation behavior.