Parental Attitudes towards Children with Hearing Impairment

The present study was undertaken to investigate the attitudes of parents towards their hearing impaired children. The sample comprised of 60 parents (30 fathers and 30 mothers) of 0-12 year old hearing impaired children, in and around Mumbai, India.”Parental Attitudes Scale” a self-assessment tool was specially developed for the purpose of the study. The scale has a reliability of .67, consisting of 33 statements. Results indicate that there is significant difference between the fathers and mothers’ attitudes with the fathers exhibiting more favourable attitudes towards male children. The findings of the study indicate the importance of counselling focused specifically towards developing healthy parental attitudes which would in turn result in acceptance of the child’s disability and facilitate therapeutic progress.