THE COMPARISON OF STRESS AND MARITAL SATISFACTION STATUS OF PARENTS OF HEARING-IMPAIRED AND NORMAL CHILDREN

Background and Aim: Stress is the source of many problems in human-kind lives and threatens people’s life constantly. Having hearing-impaired child, not only causes stress in parents, but also affects their marital satisfaction. The purpose of this study was comparing the stress and marital satisfaction status between the normal and hearing-impaired children’s parents. Methods: This was a causal-comparative study. Eighty parents of normal children and 80 parents of hearing-impaired children were chosen from rehabilitation centers and kindergartens in city of Tabriz, Iran by available and clustering sampling method. All parents were asked to complete the Friedrich’s source of stress and Enrich marital satisfaction questionnaires. Results: Parents of hearing-impaired children endure more stress than the normal hearing ones (p<0.001). The marital satisfaction of hearing-impaired children’s parents was lower than the parents of normal hearing children, too (p<0.001). Conclusion: Having a hearing-impaired child causes stress and threatens the levels of marital satisfaction. This requires much more attention and a distinct planning for parents of handicap children to reduce their stress.