Mothering a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Mizyed Hyassat (), Nawaf Al-Zyoud and Mu’tasem Al-Masa’deh
Additional contact information
Mizyed Hyassat: Department of Special Education, Princess Rahma University College, Al-Balqa Applied University, Allan 19252, Jordan
Nawaf Al-Zyoud: Department of Psychological Sciences, College of Education, Qatar University, Doha P.O. Box 2713, Qatar
Mu’tasem Al-Masa’deh: Department of Special Education, Queen Rania Faculty for Childhood, Hashemite University, Zarqa 13133, Jordan

Social Sciences, 2023, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-17

Abstract: (1) Background: The lockdown that was forced by the Jordanian government as part of the attempt to contain the COVID-19 outbreak included extreme measures such as home confinement and the shutting down of schools’ special education centers. This study explores the experiences of mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during this significant life disturbance. (2) Methods: Eleven mothers of children with ASD took part in semi-structured telephone interviews, which were transcribed verbatim and underwent thematic analysis. (3) Results: The analysis was conducted in an iterative consensus-building process to identify mothers’ experiences, concerns, challenges, coping strategies, and perceived needs during the lockdown. The main themes that emerged from the analysis were maternal stress, maternal fears, and maternal hopes. Our findings indicate that the COVID-19 outbreak greatly affected the family lives of the mothers interviewed, which required them to optimize their coping strategies and resilience. (4) Conclusions: The mothers faced significant difficulties during the pandemic and there is an urgent need to support them on multiple levels. Additionally, our findings reveal the need for more research that takes Jordan’s cultural context into account when determining how best to support children with ASD and their parents.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder; coping; Jordan; COVID-19; mothers of children with autism; resilience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/11/633/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/11/633/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:12:y:2023:i:11:p:633-:d:1281049

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().