Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the impacts of Maternal Parenting Stress on Psychological Maltreatment of Children with Mental Disabilities. The study subjects were mothers of children using the 12 day care institutions for Children with Mental Disabilities. The data from 158 mothers were used for statistical analysis. The hypothesized conceptual model was constructed to describe the relationship between parenting stress and maternal psychological maltreatment. In this model, mother's demographic characteristics (age, number of children, education), child's demographic characteristics (sex, age, degree of mental disability), family structure, mother's communication skill, mother's recognition of father's support, mother's aggressive behavior was supplied as a control variable at this time. The above causal model was examined using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). This model performed well in terms of CFI=0.926, RMSEA=0.070. The result indicated that reducing maternal parenting stress would decrease psychological maltreatment of Children with Mental Disabilities.
