Adults with Mental Retardation and Their Aging Mothers: Impacts of Siblings

This article examines the relationships between adults with mental retardation and their nonhandicapped siblings and the effect of these relationships on the well-being of aging mothers. Families are found to differ in their level and pattern of sibling involvement. Mothers whose children provided support to the adult with retardation had better well-being than mothers with no other children or no involved children. These findings are discussed in the context of family systems theory and parent-child relationships during later years.