Identity in Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Based on Interviews with Parents

This thesis is focused on parents of children with autism spectrum disorder, their parental identity and the factors that affect coping with this difficult situation. The thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part consists of two consecutive sections. The first section describes the main milestones in the history of autism concept, the development of etiology knowledge and the essential characteristics of mentioned diagnosis. This information is contained for the better understanding of what autism means and what are the parents of autistic children going through. The second section is devoted to the healthy children parents identity, its development, but also parental identity of disabled children parents. The focus is on the factors that affect the acceptance of diagnosis and coping with this fact. The empirical part consists of a qualitative study findings. As a method of research was used semi-structured interview, which we realized with the parents of autistic children in three different families. The goal is to describe the factors that impact parental identity of autistic child parents and to compare it with the known theoretical evidences, all based on real parental reports. Keywords: Autism spectrum disorders, diagnostics, development, attitude to child,..