There are several issues associated with hearing parents raising deaf children, and the ability to cope depends on the way they manage the related stress and strain, and in developing healthy attitudes and relationships.
There is accumulating evidence which suggests that parents of children who have developmental disabilities “often experience deleteriously high levels of stress”
(Lessenberry & Rehfeldt, 2004: 231). The diagnosis of deafness is a “critical life event for parents” and it can lead to “high stress experience” (Hintermair, 2006: 495). Stress is defined by Lazarus and Folkman (in Jones & Bright 2001: 20) as “a relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being”.
Lessenberry and Rehfeldt (2004: 232) state that the concept of stress can be subdivided into four domains, including the stressor, strain, coping resources, and coping strategies. The stressor can be an event or situation that is beyond the person’s ability to cope with e.g. the initial diagnosis of the child’s deafness. Strain refers to the emotional and physical symptoms related to a stressful event that the person experiences, e.g. depression and anxiety. Coping resources include what a person can
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make use of to help manage the effects of the stressor, e.g. social support networks.
Coping strategies are the ways a person uses available coping resources to help minimise or avoid the effects of the stressor, e.g. attending a parent-support group.
Scor-gie, Wilgosh and McDonald (in Hintermair, 2006: 495) summarised the most important variables for understanding parental stress and coping processes in families of children with disabilities under four headings: child variables, parent variables, family variables, and external variables. These variables are linked to the ecosystemic theory explained in 2.2.
Schirmer (2001: 25) draws attention to certain characteristics that play an important role in contributing to healthy family functioning especially in families with a deaf child. These characteristics include communication, flexibility, intimacy, conflict resolution, change and stability, which take on a special meaning in families with a deaf child. “Securing and maintaining these qualities of family life can be a particular challenge for parents who have no prior experience with deafness” (Schirmer, 2001:
26).
A major challenge facing hearing parents of deaf children is coping with stress related to the child’s deafness. Prior to the diagnosis of deafness, strain is common as parents become anxious and apprehensive about the possibility that their child may have a problem. Ross et al. (2004: 156) suggest that the “prediagnostic period is apparently a far more difficult time to live through” than the period after the confirmation of the diagnosis.
Communication with the deaf child is one of the major challenges for parents of deaf children (Schirmer, 2001: 27; Scheetz, 2001: 61). Deafness is not simply a physical challenge but also a pedagogical one because the deaf child, like the hearing child, has to be educated. Initially, the difficulty of communicating with the deaf child presents a major challenge to hearing parents. Kushalnagar et al. (2007: 337) confirm that research shows that parental stress is commonly linked to parent-child communication problems which can result in parents’ feelings of frustration and inadequacy, and that these feelings influence their self-concept. In this regard Mapp and Hudson (in Kushalnagar et al., 2007: 337) concur that parental stress is significantly associated
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with the level of communication fluency between parents and their deaf children, while Pipp-Siegel, Sedey and Yoshinaga-Itano (in Kushalnagar et al., 2007: 337) found that increased parental stress was linked to greater language delay of the child.
A study by Hadadian and Rose (in Kushalnagar et al., 2007: 337) showed that fathers’
resistance to the acceptance of the child’s deafness was related to poor communication outcomes in deaf children.
Meadow et al. (in Kushalnagar et al., 2007: 335) report that when hearing parents have limited sign language communication with their deaf children, it can result in a lack of signing skills and a lack of language acquisition in deaf children in the early years, and “delays in multiple areas of adaptive functioning”. Hintermair (2006: 493) found that the deaf child’s communicative competence is a sounder predictor of parental stress than the medium of communication (sign or spoken language). Kotze and Fölscher (in Levitz, 1991: 78) maintain that unless parents find a way of communicating effectively with the deaf child, the quality of parenting becomes compromised. This, in turn, can adversely affect the education of the deaf child as well as the emotional well-being of the parents. Poor parental emotional well-being can contribute significantly to decreased communication effectiveness between parent and child.
Meadow-Orlans et al. (2003: 30) state that several studies show that mothers tend to have better communication skills with their deaf children than do fathers, who tend to assume less responsibility for ensuring effective family communication with the deaf child. Those mothers who communicate effectively with their deaf children tend to have more stable and warm relationships with them. Those mothers who do not communicate efficiently with their deaf children tend to have less stable relationships with them, and these children tend to exhibit unacceptable behaviour in preschool or at home. “Generally, hearing parents of deaf children use more physical punishment than hearing parents with hearing children or deaf parents with either deaf or hearing children … Apparently, when communication fails, punishment is a handy alternative”
(Marschark, 1997: 81).
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The entire family of the deaf child is faced with a barrier to communication with the child. Unless definite measures are taken to establish an effective means of communication, the child’s progress could be severely hampered (Schirmer: 2001: 30).
It is important for parents to work through ways of enhancing communication with their deaf child. The lack of effective communication techniques will prevent the deaf child from becoming fully integrated into the family unit; consequently this may threaten family stability (Scheetz, 2001: 61) which can lead to increased levels of parental stress.
Frequent socio-emotional problems in deaf children are linked to high parental stress experience, while access to personal and social support is associated with significantly lower parental stress levels; furthermore parents whose deaf children have additional disabilities are especially stressed (Hintermair, 2006: 493). Herman (1994: 418) suggests that the inability of parents to fulfill specific needs of the child appears to be a potential source of stress for parents. While fathers tend to turn inward towards the family for support, mothers turn outward toward social networks for help in coping with a stressful situation. In order to reduce stress, Dyson (1991: 623-629) suggests that intervention programmes should aim at increasing the child’s competence, changing parental perception and caretaking of the child as it seems that these are the major areas that lead to parental stress. The hardships experienced by the family in caring for the deaf child can lead to chronic stress. Bailey, Blasco and Simeonsson (1992: 7) highlight some of these hardships: financial difficulties; stigmatisation from the community; difficulty in liaising with professionals; strained family relationships;
changed family lifestyle, and anxiety about the future of the child.
Parents of children with disabilities often experience very intense emotional stress that can strain marital relationships (Scheetz, 2001: 61; Luterman, 1991: 146). A child’s disability can evoke such strong emotions in parents that it becomes a source of conflict and disrupts family life. Dysart (1993: 31) states that millions of people go through endless emotional suffering simply because they have not been adequately prepared to face the reality of deafness. If these emotional reactions are not dealt with properly they can be magnified out of proportion, and consequently even lead to increased parental stress.
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The coping styles of individual family members will depend on the ability to handle stress and on the attitude towards the deaf child, whose birth demands greater adjustments in family life. Most deaf mothers can recognise whether their children are deaf by at least six months of age simply by the way their babies behave or react to them, whereas the average age of diagnosis of most deaf children of hearing parents is thirty months in the United States (Marschark, 1997: 77). The earlier the diagnosis of deafness, the sooner can intervention programmes begin, and the greater is the advantage for the deaf child’s development. Parental stress is likely to be reduced once deafness is accepted and measures are in place to work with it. Stress between parents will dissipate, and there is no evidence that having a deaf child influences the success or failure of marriages in any way. Research has revealed that those mothers who receive emotional and practical support from their family and friends are able to cope more efficiently with the demands of having a deaf child (Marschark, 1997: 16).