Comparing Stress of Mothers of Pre-school Children with and without Intellectual Disabilities

The aim of this study was to compare stress of mothers of pre-school child-ren with and without intellectual disa-bilities. This is a causal-comparative research. A sample of 116 mothers (58 Mothers of Pre-school children with intellectual disabilities and 58 mothers of Pre-school children without intelle-ctual disabilities) were selected. Family inventory of life events was used for measuring stress level. Analysis of data using two-way ana-lysis of variance test showed that the stress level of mothers of pre-school children with intellectual disabilities significantly are higher than the stress level of mothers of pre-school children without intellectual disabilities. Moreover, multiple analysis of varia-nce revealed that in five subscales (intrafamily strains, marital strains, finance and business strains, illness and family care strains, losses, family legal violations) stress level of moth-ers of pre-school children with intelle-ctual disabilities significantly are more than the stress level of mothers of pre-school children without intellectual disabilities and in the three subscales (work-family transitions and strains, transition in and out, pregnancy and childbearing strains) there was no sig-nificant differences between mothers of pre-school children with and wit-hout intellectual disabilities. According to the finding of this rese-arch, it is recommended that educators of children with intellectual disability provide family education program especially in stress management area for parents of pre-school children with intellectual disability in order to help multidimensional development of the-se children and prevent detrimental consequences that threaten these chil-dren in school age and adulthood