Abstract

This study was to examined influences of family functioning, social support, parenting stress, and mothers' interactive style on the child development of young children with disabilities. Participants consisted of 50 mothers and their children who either had general developmental disabilities or had been diagnosed with Autism or Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD). The data used for this study included videotaped observations of parent-child play; a play based assessment; and standardized measures of mothers family functioning, social support and parenting stress. Correlational analysis indicated that there were low to moderate levels of correlations among family functioning, social support, parenting stress and mothers' interactive style. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that both family factors (family cohesion, satisfaction with support and parenting stress) and maternal responsiveness contributed independently to children's rate of development. However, maternal responsiveness was the strongest predictor, accounting for 14% of the variance in children’s development. Results from the hierarchical regression were supportive of the hypothesis that family factors moderate the impact of maternal responsiveness on children‘s development.