Father’s Acceptance and Rejection of Children with Disabilities

Abstract

Having children is the most beautiful thing parents will feel everywhere. The dream of many parents is that a child is born with perfection, but what happens when the child that is awaited has limitations? children born with low intellectual abilities or often referred to as mentally retarded children. Gratitude for having a baby is finally accompanied by rejection. Regarding intellectual disabilities children as punishment for past sins. This exploratory study reports some in-depth evidence from the experience of fathers who can ultimately accept the presence of intellectual disabilities children in the family. We conducted in-depth interviews with five fathers who have children with intellectual disabilities. The aim is to describe their experience of fathering a child with special needs. Data were analysed using the Burnard approach, which has similarities with phenomenological and content analysis. Results and discussion show that acceptance of the father with a sincere heart helps the development of mentally retarded children. Initially, there was rejection, because they were ashamed of having a mentally retarded child that the mother took the role of parenting without the support of the father. The father takes the role of parenting after accepting the fact of having an intellectual disabilities child. We conclude that fathers who accept children with intellectual disabilities will share the focus on parenting but the focus is stronger on children with disabilities than other children. Fathers who do not accept their children born with intellectual disabilities will harbour latent anger towards children with disabilities so that the care becomes the mother's own without the father's participation in parenting.