Resilience Within Families of Young Children with ASD

Resilience within families may temper the risk of high parenting stress faced by parents of young children with ASD. Within families, individual differences between parents may contribute differently to resilience. There is a lack in knowledge regarding the contribution of intrapersonal and contextual factors associated with resilience in parents of young children with ASD within the same family. In this cross-sectional study (n=249 individuals), resilience within families is addressed by investigating (1) family parenting stress, (2) associated factors contributing to maternal (n=87) and paternal (n=74) resilience, and (3) relating to resilience within families (n=74) of 3-to-6-year-old children with ASD (n=88). (1) The percentage of families with regular parenting stress in both parents (33%) is almost equal to the proportion of families with (sub)clinical parenting stress in both parents (36%), families with mothers experiencing (sub)clinical and fathers experience regular parenting stress are twice as common (22%) than the other way around (9%). Contributors to (2) mothers' resilience to parenting stress are good planning/organizing skills and satisfactory social relations. Contributors to fathers' resilience are low levels of 'worrying' and good social relations. The shared contributing factor to resilience within families (3) is the satisfaction of both parents with their social relations. Most of the parents of the same young child with ASD experience a comparable degree of parental stress, with different dynamics in individual parents contributing to resilience within families. This suggests the need for a personalized parental approach in families with young children with ASD.