Parental attitudes and acceptance of deafness related to the sex-role development of the deaf child

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the sex-role development of deaf children and their parents' attitudes about, and acceptance of, their deafness. Other variables examined included the child's self-concept and the parents' child-rearing attitudes. The 16 deaf children in the study included 10 girls and seven boys who ranged in age from 6 to 13 years with a mean of 9 years. The 21 parents of the children who participated in this study included 14 mothers and seven fathers. The children were tested at their school, a day facility for the deaf. Sex-role development was defined as both sex-role preference and sex-role adoption. Brown's (1956) IT Scale for Children was used to measure sex-role preference. Sex-role adoption was measured by Biller's (1968) Teacher Rating Scale. Self-concept was measured by a revision of Meadow's (1967) Self-image Test. The parents were interviewed at their home or at their child's school. An interview schedule developed by the researcher was used to measure family climate, defined for this study as the attitudes of the parents about deafness and their child and the coping behaviors used by them in dealing with the child's deafness. Shoben's (1949) Parent Attitude Survey was administered to measure the parents' child-rearing attitudes