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Examining Differences in Parenting Stress, Parenting Efficacy, and Household Context among Mothers of Youth with Autism and/or ADHD

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Abstract

Parents of youth with neurodevelopmental disorders experience unique stressors in family functioning when compared to parents of neurotypical youth. A paucity of research, however, has examined differences in parenting experiences across families of youth with varying neurodevelopmental disorder presentations. This paper focuses on two common and frequently co-occurring conditions: autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this study, we compared parenting stress, parenting efficacy, and the household context across a sample of 90 mothers of adolescents ages 11–16 years with (1) autism, (2) ADHD, or (3) autism and clinically-elevated ADHD symptoms (Autism + ADHD). Our findings demonstrated differences in all three domains of family functioning across these diagnostic groups. Mothers of adolescents in the Autism + ADHD group endorsed greater stress than mothers of adolescents in the Autism alone group. Parenting efficacy and the household context were poorest (i.e., low efficacy and high chaos) among mothers of adolescents with ADHD and significantly greater than in the Autism alone group. Given our results, we highlight the importance of accounting for co-occurring symptomatology in these populations in research and clinical practice. This will help to accurately capture unique needs of the family system and make appropriate treatment recommendations that leverage families’ strengths and are sensitive to family stressors.

Highlights

  • Group differences in parenting and household factors were identified between mothers of adolescents with autism, ADHD, or autism and clinically-elevated ADHD symptoms (Autism + ADHD).

  • Parenting stress was highest in the combined Autism + ADHD group and significantly greater than in the Autism alone group.

  • Parenting efficacy and household order were lowest in the ADHD group and significantly different than the Autism alone group.

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Notes

  1. The phrase “with autism” is used to refer to adolescents with diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder. Person-first language is used in this paper upon the journal’s request.

  2. The IRB for the larger ADHD study has been closed and, thus, since de-identified data were analyzed here, ages of those youth were unavailable.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would also like to thank the families who participated in this research, and the graduate and undergraduate research teams who contributed to this work. An earlier iteration of this project was presented at the International Society for Autism Research 2019 Annual Meeting under the title, “Comparison of Parenting Stress, Efficacy, and the Home Environment Among Families of Youth with ASD, ADHD, and ASD with ADHD Features.”

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge grant support from the Autism Society of Southeastern Wisconsin (ASSEW), Marquette University, and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through Grants UL1TR001436, KL2TR001438, and 8KL2TR000056. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Amy Vaughan Van Hecke, Alyson Gerdes

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Hillary K. Schiltz, Alana J. McVey, Amy Vaughan Van Hecke & Alyson Gerdes

  2. Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Alana J. McVey

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Alana J. McVey

  4. Department of Pediatric Behavioral Health, Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, Grand Rapids, MI, USA

    Kelsey Gonring

  5. Department of Speech-Language Pathology, Concordia University Wisconsin, Mequon, WI, USA

    Angela D. Haendel

  6. Department of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology/Stem-cell Transplant, Children’s Hospital of Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Christina Murphy

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Correspondence to Hillary K. Schiltz.

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Schiltz, H.K., McVey, A.J., Gonring, K. et al. Examining Differences in Parenting Stress, Parenting Efficacy, and Household Context among Mothers of Youth with Autism and/or ADHD. J Child Fam Stud 31, 774–789 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-021-02083-2

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