Authors: Megara Jensen, Matthew Hatch, Brock Hughes, Madeline Gillies, Spencer Myres, Maddie Blackham, Autumn Gould, Kate Leigh, Nate Lieshman
Mentors: Rebecca A. Lundwall
Insitution: Brigham Young University
Parenting is stressful. Of all children with special needs, parents of children on the autism spectrum report spending the most time at educational, medical, psychological, and behavioral appointments. They also have significant financial expenses. Therefore, we set out to determine if parents on the autism spectrum are more stressed than parents of neurotypical children. We recruited participants using fliers and posts on social media autism support groups and on bulletin boards across campus. The parents (all mothers) had children between 8- and 32-months-old. For this analysis, we divided families into the ASD-sib group if the toddler had an older sibling with autism and the neurotypical group if they had no first-, second-, or third-degree relatives with autism. We asked them to complete surveys using Qualtrics regarding Family Quality of Life, Parenting Daily Hassles, and Parenting Stress measures. Twenty-three parents completed all surveys (n = 7 in the ASD group and n = 16 in the neurotypical group). We performed an ANCOVA with Parenting Stress as the outcome variable, presence of ASD in the family as the grouping variable, and Daily Hassles and Family Quality of Life as predictors. Age was entered as a control variable. We found a trend for the significance for Family Quality of Life predicting Parent Stress (F [17, 23] = 3.80, p = .083, eta2 = .17). No other variables showed a trend for significance. This suggests that parents of children on the autism spectrum are indeed more stressed. Although we need to collect more data, this motivates us in a larger study we are conducting regarding the effects of mindfulness on parental stress levels.