Peer-reviewed article
Raising a child with disabilities: Mothers’ self-forgiveness and well-being
Sara Pelucchi, Giorgia Finardi, Francesca Giorgia Paleari, Giancarlo Paterlini ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examines how mothers of children with learning disabilities experience emotional strain and explores whether self-forgiveness—forgiving oneself for perceived mistakes—helps protect their psychological well-being. The research involved 93 mothers who completed questionnaires about their experiences caring for their disabled child. The study suggests that self-forgiveness may reduce negative feelings like frustration and improve mothers' well-being, which in turn affects parenting practices and child outcomes. The findings highlight the need to support maternal mental health when designing programs for families of disabled children.
Key points
- Parents of children with disabilities experience negative feelings including frustration, impotence, and intolerance, with lower overall psychological well-being
- Mothers are particularly exposed to emotional overload and distress from perceived failures in assisting their disabled child
- Maternal well-being is important because it relates to unfavourable parenting practices, poor school performance, and child health problems
- Self-forgiveness for perceived mistakes may help reduce negative effects on personal and relational well-being among caregivers
- The study examined self-forgiveness as a protective factor that may work both directly and indirectly through reducing distress and increasing perceived skillfulness
Limitations
The document does not specify the countries where the study was conducted or provide detailed results of the analysis. No information is given about the country context, socioeconomic factors, or how findings might differ across different settings and disability types.
Abstract
Disabilities have been proved to negatively affect not only the diagnosed child, but also the family as a whole. Parents’ daily strive to cope with child’s disabilities generate negative feelings like frustration, impotence, and intolerance, as well as lower overall psychological well-being (Cramm & Nieboer, 2011; Ha et al., 2008). Literature underlines that mothers are especially exposed to emotional overload and distress deriving from the strains and perceived failures in providing assistance to their disabled child (Lee, 2013). Maternal wellbeing is particularly important because of its relations with unfavourable parenting practices, poor school performance, and child health problems (Yamaoka et al., 2016). A growing evidence indicates that forgiving oneself for misconducts or mistakes, for which a person feels responsible, helps to reduce their negative effects upon personal and relational well-being (Pelucchi et al., 2017; Whol et al, 2008). However only scant evidence is available on the protective function of self-forgiveness among primary caregivers of disabled persons. The present research intends to address this shortcoming by investigating self-forgiveness among mothers (n=93) having a child with learning disabilities and providing data via questionnaire. Mothers’ self-forgiveness for perceived mistakes done in dealing with their child’s disabilities was expected to be related to their psychological well-being and parenting behaviors both directly and indirectly, through the mediation of the distress and skillfulness experienced while providing learning assistance to the child. Results will be discussed in terms of the need to consider self-forgiveness when planning interventions for increasing well-being among disabled children’s caregivers.