RELIGIOSITY, SPIRITUALITY, AND HARDINESS IN PARENTS RAISING A CHILD WITH A DISABILITY

Purpose/Aims: To examine religiosity, spirituality, and hardiness in parents raising children with disabilities (CWD) to determine if there are differences according to parent gender/type of disability and if there is a relationship between variables.

Background: Public religiosity refers to what one does to worship outside the home. Private religiosity refers to what one does to worship in one's own home. Spirituality refers to how often individuals feel prayers are answered/how much God influences their life. Hardiness considers if the family is optimistic/downtrodden when faced with difficulties. Religiosity and spirituality may be important for families raising a CWD because of belief systems/social support offered by religion. Hardiness is associated with coping/satisfaction with family functioning in families raising CWD. Although important, there is little information on how these variables are linked in families raising a CWD, and how parent gender/type of disability is related to these variables.

Methods: After obtaining  IRB approval and parental consent,  223 parents living in a western state and raising children with autism (n=63), Down syndrome  (DS) (n=43), other disabilities (OD) including orthopedic impairment, intellectual disabilities, emotional or physical disabilities (n=51), multiple disabilities (MD) including both physical and intellectual disabilities (n=32) or typically developing children (TDC) (n = 34) independently completed a 13 item public and private religiosity scale, a 6 item spirituality scale and the 20 item Family Hardiness Index. Analysis included descriptive statistics, ANOVA, correlations, and regressions.  

Results: Mothers' private/public religiosity and spirituality were significantly higher than fathers'.  Differences were noted according to type of disability: parents of TDC (M = 3.26) and parents raising children with MD (M = 3.32) had higher hardiness scores than parents raising children with autism (M = 3.11). However, parents of children with OD had higher hardiness scores than parents raising children with MD (M = 3.19). Parents' public/private religiosity and spirituality were positively correlated with hardiness.  In multiple regressions after controlling for family income, parent education, total number of children in the family, the age of the CWD, and parent caregiver burden (to indicate the level of stress the parent experienced), mothers' private religiosity predicted hardiness and explained 27% of the variance. Mothers' public religiosity predicted hardiness before/after including controls, explaining 25% of the variance. Mothers' spirituality predicted hardiness before/after including controls, and explained 26% of the variance. In multiple regressions using similar control variables, fathers' private religiosity predicted hardiness only after adding control variables and explained 27% of the variance.  Fathers' public religiosity approached significance in predicting hardiness; but after adding control variables, became significant and explained 27% of the variance. Fathers' spirituality predicted hardiness before/after adding control variables, explaining 34% of the variance. 

Implications: Since differences occurred in spirituality and religiosity according to parent gender and disability and these same variables predicted hardiness after adding control variables, it is important to provide assistance related to spirituality and religiosity according to parent gender and disability type and offer information to these parents about seeking comfort and strength from religious and spiritual sources in order to strengthen hardiness.