Personality, coping style and well-being of parents rearing children with developmental disabilities

Background Parents with children with developmental disabilities (DD) encounter a variety of stressors associated with rearing their children and must develop effective coping mechanisms in order to adapt successfully to these challenges. Previous research has failed to establish the role of parental individual differences in the reported use of different coping strategies. The current study explores parental personality and whether children with DD were adopted or born into the families and their influence on the coping strategies used by mothers and fathers. Methods A total of 97 mother-father dyads rearing at least one child with DD were participants. They narrated stressful situations related to their child and completed the Ways of Coping Questionnaire twice. Data were also collected with regard to personality, depression and subjective well-being (SWB). Results Both adoptive and birth mothers and fathers used more problem-focused than emotion-focused strategies. Personality factors, Neuroticism especially, were predictive of coping strategy use. Higher levels of Positive Reappraisal were associated with higher levels of SWB, whereas higher levels of Escape-Avoidance were associated with lower levels of SWB, but only for mothers. Results were consistent with a dispositional model of strategy use in that frequency of use was associated with personality characteristics, was consistent over time, and for different children in the same families. Future research should focus on the persistence of the associations between strategy use and well-being and whether they hold true at different stages of the lifespan when coping contexts may change quite dramatically.