Maternal And Paternal Differences in Parental Stress and Children's Autistic Features Among Parents of Preschool Autistic Children.

All measures were taken at one point in time, so the study cannot show whether children's difficulties drive parental stress or the other way round. Every family was already using formal early intervention services at one of six autism-specific centres, so these parents may not be like parents who are not in services. Stress, behaviour and quality of life all came from parent-report questionnaires, which can be shaped by how a parent feels or by what they think they should say; the authors note this could work differently for mothers and fathers. Many more mothers than fathers took part (465 versus 216), and the repetitive behaviour questionnaire was completed for only 123 of the 516 children, so some comparisons rest on much less data. The stress questionnaire performed well in this sample, but the authors note it may still measure stress differently for parents from different cultural backgrounds.

The work was funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC), established and supported under the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centres Program, which supported the larger Autism subtyping project the data came from. The authors declared no competing interests.

Do not read these links as cause and effect. Everything was measured at one time point, so a child's behaviour problems may add to a parent's stress, a stressed parent may report more behaviour problems, or both may move together for other reasons. The study cannot tell these apart.