Hardiness in families with and without a child with Down Syndrome

The paper reports on mothers preceptions, ideas and beliefts about the hardiness and reilience of their families, in families with and without a child with Down Syndrome. Mothers in Australia and New Zealand responded to The Family Hardiness Index (FHI) a standardised psychometric instrument suitable for the purpose of this investigation. Furthernore the Australian cohort responded to an in-depth interview schedule in which family hardiness was the main feature. Results suggest that there are minimal differences between families with and without a child with a disability. Furthermore mean differences between the two groups were not statistically significant. These findings point to increasing evidence that the previously identified pathology and dysfunction in families with a child with disability cannot be easily generalised to all familes with disability and in fact there exists emerging evidence that the presence of disability can have the opposite effect and provide families with a sense of hardiness or resilience. The close agreement between the means obtained in this study and the means of the published comparative data of the index suggests that the FHI is a suitable instrument to complement full family hardiness assessment. [AJ]