Influence of age and gender of the autistic children on their parent’s life satisfaction

The present study aimed to assess the influence of age and gender of the autistic children on their parents’ life satisfaction. The study was conducted on a total sample of 190 parents of children with autism aged 5 to 10 years old from various special schools in Bangalore city. The data was collected using the self-structured Life Satisfaction Scale through purposive sampling technique. ‘f’-test and ‘t’-test were used to analyse the data for the study. The finding of the study revealed that parents of children with autism have low life satisfaction. Further, the data also showed that there were a highly significance difference between age of the autistic children and their parent’s life satisfaction. And, gender of the child did not influence the parent’s life satisfaction. Thus, the study highlights the need for educating the parents of children with autism on how to handle their children’s maladaptive behaviours and techniques of teaching the daily living activities to their autistic children. By doing so, children with autism will be able to perform some of the simple task by themselves with minimum support in their later life. Moreover, parents will also be able to take their personal time.