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Expectations And Experiences Of Fathers Who Have Parented Children With And Without Intellectual Disabilities, Jane Christina Kusmik Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The parenting experience is as diverse as the children parented. Each child has diverse personality traits requiring flexibility and specificity in parenting strategy. This need for flexibility and specificity is more complex when one or more children within a family has an intellectual disability. Although research in this area is abundant, investigators have historically focused on mothers' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to represent the entire family (Essex, Seltzer, & Krauss, 2001; Greenberg, 2002) rather than focusing on fathers and their caregiving relationships with their children in need of malleable but consistent parenting. Using a qualitative descriptive design, this qualitative study …