Fostering Awareness and Acceptance of Disability in Mexican Mothers of

The arrival of a disabled child is overwhelming to any family; it is often a shocking event that im-pacts the life cycle of the family. Several studies highlight the support that must be provided to parents of children with disabilities. In Mexico, this support is not often promoted in a successfully way neither in official nor private institutions. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of a special assistance program carried out with five autistic children ’ mothers, aged between 28 and 43 years (Mage = 35.4). Attention was focused on: family functioning, knowledge and acceptance of disability. We used a mixed design with a concurrent triangulation; the study was non-experi-mental, ex post facto, descriptive, and cross-cutting. The main findings show that this program had a positive effect on mothers and several changes regarding the studied variables were observed. It was important to highlight that there was one unexpected result: the personal and group empo-werment that enabled the participants, on the one hand, to acknowledge themselves as women in a couple relationship and not only as mothers of their disabled child, and, on the other hand, to form a network of mothers who can look for legal and administrative protection for their autisti