Child and Parent Predictors of Family Adjustment in Households Containing Young Developmentally Disabled Children

This research surveys a cross-sectional, random sample of 88 families containing young developmentally disabled children by using in-home interviews of both mothers and fathers. Parent, child, and marital attributes are studied to explore the factors that are most closely tied to levels of overall family functioning. Positive family adjustment is found to have little relationship to specific child attributes (gender, level of disability, or temperament). Specific attributes of marital adjustment (dyadic cohesion and dyadic consensus) are found to be tied to achieved level of family functioning. Education level of a disabled child's father appears to facilitate overall family adjustment. The findings have implications for family practitioners, including the need to complete family-focused assessments at an early stage in the detection of disability and the need to mobilize and strengthen the parental subsystem to promote positive, family adjustment.