Parental Attitude towards Disability and Gender in the Nigerian Context: Implications for Conselling

Abstract

The study was undertaken to investigate the attitudes of parents towards their children gender and handicap conditions. The purposive, stratified sampling technique was adopted. The samples comprised of 60 parents (30 Fathers and 30 Mothers). A 35 item Parental Attitude Scale Instrument constructed by the researcher was used to assess information from the respondents. The instrument possess a high face and content validity and a test-re-test reliability coefficient of 0.96. The results revealed significant differences related to gender of the children on various domains of the scale: There is a significant difference between the fathers and mothers’ attitudes with father exhibiting more favourable attitudes towards male children. Mothers attitudes were also significant on the domain of over protection and acceptance. Counselling focused specifically towards developing healthy parental attitudes which would in turn result in acceptance of the child disability irrespective of gender were offered. The importance of strengthening the social support network of these children’s families was also reiterated.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p2255