Parental stress,care burden,and coping styles in mothers of autistic children during the pandemic of COVID-19
Niloofar Sani
Fateme Mohammadi
Salman Khazaei
Tayebeh Hasan Tehrani
Saeid Bashirian
Abstract：Objectives: To investigate the parenting stress, care burden, and coping styles in mothers of autistic children during the pandemic of COVID-19. The outbreak of COVID-19 and the closure of education and care centers for these children may affect stress, care burden, and adaptation of these mothers.
Methods: This study was a cross-sectional research. A total of 110 mothers completed questionnaires. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation), independent t-test, ANOVA, and multiple linear regressions.
Results: Findings showed that parenting stress has a strong and direct correlation with caring burden (P＜0.001, r=0.95), and a strong and indirect correlation with coping styles (P＜0.001, r=-0.91). Variables of caring burden, coping strategies, mother's age, mother's job, mother's education, number of autistic children, economic status, children's age, and functional level of autism in children can predict 72.21％ of the variance in parenting stress in these mothers.
Conclusions: In the present study, parenting stress of mothers of autistic children was reported to be high during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that pediatric nurses and health policymakers should provide a suitable educational and supportive environment for mothers of autistic children to enhance the coping level of these mothers and consequently reduce their parenting stress and care burden.
Keywords：autistic children COVID-19care burdencoping stylesmothersparental stress
Publication Date：2025-09-20
Online Publishing Date：2025-10-13(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：9( 301-309 )