ABSTRACT
To better understand the status of parenting/family research, this chapter is topically organized as follows. We begin with a brief review of the history of the misinformed hypothesis about the role of family process in the etiology of autism. This component of the review recognizes that family process does not play a fundamental in the etiology of autism. Nevertheless, around the world the need to continue to work toward decreasing processes that stigmatize some families of children with autism remains. The second section of the chapter follows with an overview of the many factors that are associated with stress in the families and lives of parents rearing children with ASD. A discussion of the variables related to the coping and resilience in the face of stress follows with notations to the emerging cross-cultural literature on coping. The third section of the chapter examines studies of the processes of parenting and family interactions with respect to the development of children with autism. Here, research on transactions of parenting and family processes and autism interventions are considered. This section also focuses on the shifting nature of parenting across the preschool, school-age, and adult periods of development of the family member with ASD.
