Psychological Hardiness and Marital Quality in Mothers Having Children with or without Intellectual Disability: A Comparative Study

Mothers rearing children with intellectual disability experience excessive distress as they have to take extra care of the child and needs to invest more time in meeting the day-to-day needs of the child. This impacts their marital quality as they are left with less time to focus on their relationship. Therefore, it becomes essential for mothers having children with disability to develop psychological hardiness in order to combat the originated stressors. The present study aims to see whether any significant difference exists between psychological hardiness and marital quality in mothers having children with and without intellectual disability. For this purpose, the data was collected from (N=50) mothers having children with intellectual disability and (N=50) mothers having children without intellectual disability. In the present study, purposive sampling was used. Psychological Hardiness Scale by Kobasa and Maddi (1984) and Martial Quality Scale by Shah (1991, 1995) were used in the present study. Data were analyzed using inferential statistics such as an Independent sample t-test and Pearson product-moment correlation. A significant difference exists between the two groups in marital quality and various dimensions of psychological hardiness. But no significant relationship is seen between psychological hardiness and marital quality among the two groups.