Hope and subjective well‐being among parents of children with special needs

Abstract

A B S T R AC TThe current study examined subjective well-being (SWB) in parents who raise children with special needs. Previous studies that focused on parenting children with special needs stressed increased risk of depression. This study examined parental level of hope, the significance of being involved in a partner relationship and parental perception of the seriousness of their child's disability, each a factor that may influence parental SWB. A random sample of 92 parents raising children with special needs in Israel participated in the study. They completed three questionnaires, examining parent's perception of the severity of their child's disability, parental SWB and parents' level of hope. Results revealed that a high level of hope, being in a partnered relationship, and perception of the child's disability as having some positive influence on central aspects of the parents' life, are all significant contributors to raising parental SWB. Study findings show that 'agency', a component of the concept of 'hope', is a significant factor in predicting SWB in parents of a child with special needs. Perhaps awareness of how they can improve their SWB by using certain aspects of their lifestyle to their advantage can help improve quality of life for parents of children with special needs.

Resilience, Hope, and Subjective Happiness Among the Turkish Population: Fear of COVID-19 as a Mediator

“…Moreover, interventions directed towards developing hope have been effective in decreasing the development of psychological disorders (Rustøen et al 2011) and PTSD (Yousefi et al 2016). On the other hand, hope has a positive correlation with subjective happiness (Sariçam 2015) and subjective well-being (Kato and Snyder 2005;Satici 2016;Shenaar-Golan 2017;Yalçın and Malkoç 2015). Thus, the finding here that hope appears to develop mental health by decreasing fear can be said to exhibit similar features with the findings of previous research.…”

Parenting and Future Anxiety: The Impact of Having a Child with Developmental Disabilities

“…In general, mothers and fathers raising children with DD report poorer physical health than parents of children with TD [7,13,14]. The limited previous research on FA in parents of children with DD showed that mothers’ anxieties were primarily connected with the child: his or her quality of life in the future, self-reliance, education, relationships with others, possibilities of employment, or financial prospects [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25].…”

External and Internal Factors Affecting Subjective Well Being Parents of Children With Special Needs

“…However, SWB research on parents with special need children was still limited. Electronic data search done through Science Direct, Reserchgate, Sage, Garuda and Google Scholar only detected several SWB research done on parents who have children with special needs in Italy: Toffalini, E., Veltri, A., & Cornoldi, C. (2015) [1]; in Israel: Shenaar-Golan, V. (2016) [2]; Shenaar -Golan, V. (2017) [3]; Werner, S., & Shulman, C. (2013) [4]; in Ghana: Dey et al (2019) [5]; in America: King et al (2000) [6]; in Indonesia: Hasanah, N. (2019) [7]; Khoiriyah, N. M., Agustin, R. W., & Setyanto, A. T. (2016) [8]; Malik, F. (2018) [16]; in Pakistan: Fatima, I., & Suhail, K. (2010) [17]; Fatima, I., & Suhail, K. (2020) [18]; in Taiwan: Hsieh, Y. L., & Lo, J. L. (2013) [19]; in Turkey: Palancı, M. (2018) [20]; in Iran: Rostami, M., Mehraban, S., Zarei, F., Sharifi, M., & Movallali, G. (2019) [21]; in Malaysia: Ubeh, C., Bahari, F., & Voo, P. S. K. (2017) [22]. SWB is a broad concept regarding the evaluation one's life and emotional experience which consists of high life satisfaction, high positive effect, and low negative effect.…”