ABSTRACT
Rearing a child with mental retardation challenges any parent. Besides the child’s cognitive difficulties, children with mental retardation often have associated motor, medical, psychopathological, and other disabilities. So too must one consider the parents’ emotional reactions and concerns. Parents of children with mental retardation must cope with having produced a “defective” child, a child who looks and acts differently from agemates. Such parental concerns reoccur throughout the child’s life, culminating in the issue of how the adult with mental retardation will live when parents can no longer provide in-home care. And yet, difficult as such parenting issues are, many parents cope successfully with rearing a child with mental retardation. Different families vary in their styles of coping, specific child characteristics influence parental and familial reactions, and many formal and informal supports protect parents from depression and hopelessness.
