Children's feelings toward parents in the context of parental disability

The purpose of the study was to examine the influence of parents' disability on children's feelings toward their parents. The paper focuses on the comparison of children's feelings toward their parents among school-age children with disabled parents (research group, n=45) and without disabled parents (control group, n=46). A two-dimensional approach was used. This approach is based on the assumption that positive and negative dimensions coexist relatively independently, rather than being polar opposites. The results show that positive and negative feelings toward parents coexist among most of the children in both the groups, but the general intensity of feeling toward parents and the discrepancy between the positive and the negative feeling were higher in the research group than in the control group. The research group was found to express more positive and ambivalent feelings and fewer negative and indifferent feelings than the control group. Moderator effects of age on these feelings in both groups were found as well. The implications of the research findings are discussed and future research is recommended.