Parents Of Children With Cerebral Palsy Parenting Stress And Coping Style, Social Support Related Research

Cerebral palsy is one of common diseases of children with disabilities. Cerebral palsy has brought serious adverse effects to the children’s lives of self-care ability and social activities. Events of the cerebral palsy, bring children with not only the pain, but also a serious of negative life events for the family and society. To help their children to get the most movement, intelligence, language and social adaptation ability, parents are under a lot of parenting stress. But at present, there is little research about parenting stress of cerebral palsy children’s parents, and the relationship between parenting stress, social support and coping styles are unclear. This study aims to investigate the parenting stress, coping styles and social support of cerebral palsy children’s parents, in order to found the relationship between parenting stress, coping style and social support, and thus to provide valuable theoretical basis and reference for the interventions on reducing parenting stress of cerebral palsy children’s parents.Object:1)To describe the current status of parenting stress, coping styles and social support of cerebral palsy children’s parents;2)To identify the general information affecting the parenting stress of cerebral palsy children’s parents;3)To explore the relationship between parenting stress, coping styles and social support of cerebral palsy children’s parents.Methods:A convenient sample of161cerebral palsy children’s parents participated in the study, who are from one tertiary hospital and one tertiary rehabilitation hospital in Beijing. Investigating the information of parenting stress, coping styles and social support of cerebral palsy children’s parents. Questionnaire including general data questionnaire, parenting stress index/short form, simplified coping style questionnaire and social support scale (including two subscales: the sources of social support and the types of social support).Results:①The score of parenting stress of cerebral palsy children’s parents was102.72±18.97, in a very high level, most of the parents’ parenting stress are very high.②In the parenting stress of cerebral palsy children’s parents, parent distress score is38.73±8.23score, score the highest, followed by difficult children score is33.99±7.98, parent-child dysfunctional interaction score is29.99±7.16, scored the lowest. In the process of taking care of children with cerebral palsy, parents feel the biggest pressure is parent distress, the pressure of parent-child dysfunctional interaction is minimal.③In the multiple linear regression model, parenting stress is predicted by parents’ employment status and the degree of paralysis in children.④In the parents’ coping styles, positive coping style score is19.28±6.56, negative coping style score is8.70±2.73, parents in general adopting more positive coping styles.⑤In the parents’ social support, sources of social support score is23.65±10.40, parents getting little sources of social support; Types of social support score is15.62±7.54, parents getting little social support type, especially getting least information support.⑥The parent-child dysfunctional interaction is negatively correlated with positive coping styles (p<0.05); Difficult child and the total pressure scale are positively correlated with negative coping styles (p<0.05); Parent distress have no correlation with coping styles (p>0.05).⑦The parent distress is negatively correlated with informal sources of support, formal sources of support, sources of social support, emotional support, tools support, the types of social support (p<0.05); Parent-child dysfunctional interaction is negatively correlated with emotional support (p<0.05); The total pressure scale is negatively correlated with emotional support (p<0.05); Difficult child has no correlation with social support (p>0.05).⑧Parents’ positive coping styles is positively correlated with informal sources of support, sources of social support, emotional support, tools support, types of social support (p<0.05); Negative coping styles has no correlation with social support (p>0.05).Conclusion:Research shows that most of the cerebral palsy children’s parents are at a very high level of parenting stress. There are some demographic factors that may affect the parenting stress of cerebral palsy children’s parents, such as parents’ employment status and the degree of paralysis in children. Encouraging parents to take positive coping styles and to avoid negative coping styles, improving parents’ degree of using accessible social support, increasing parents’ sources and types of social support, may help to effectively reduce the parenting stress of cerebral palsy children’s parents.