Longitudinal impact of parents' discrimination experiences on children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms: A 2-year study of families of autistic children.

This study followed 441 families with autistic children in Hong Kong for 2 years. It found that when parents face discrimination, it leads to depression, harsher parenting, and more conflict between parents. These problems then cause more behavioral and emotional difficulties in their autistic children. The research shows how discrimination against parents can harm the whole family over time.

This 2-year longitudinal study examined how discrimination experiences of parents with autistic children affect child outcomes. Following 441 families in Hong Kong across three time points, researchers found that parental discrimination experiences predicted increased child internalizing and externalizing symptoms through three mediating pathways: increased parental depression, harsh parenting behaviors, and coparenting conflict. Path analysis demonstrated both direct effects of discrimination on parenting factors and indirect effects on child symptoms. The findings suggest discrimination against parents creates a cascade of negative effects on family functioning that ultimately impacts autistic children's behavioral and emotional wellbeing over time.

Findings highlight need for stigma reduction programs and family-based interventions to address discrimination experiences. Clinicians should assess discrimination experiences when working with autism families and consider impacts on parental wellbeing and parenting practices as factors affecting child outcomes.

Study limited to Hong Kong families, which may limit generalizability to other cultural contexts. The abstract does not specify measurement tools used or provide effect sizes. Potential confounding variables are not discussed.

Although many parents of autistic children are routinely discriminated against, the potential impact of this discrimination on their parenting processes and child-rearing outcomes has seldom been investigated. The present study addressed this gap in the literature by examining the longitudinal associations of parents' discrimination experiences with children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms among families of autistic children and testing whether these associations would be mediated by parental depression, harsh parenting, and coparenting conflict. On three occasions across 2 years (i.e. T1, T2, and T3), 441 parents of autistic children from Hong Kong, China, provided questionnaire data.

Path analyses showed that parents' discrimination experiences at T1 had significant direct effects on parental depression, harsh parenting, and coparenting conflict at T2, which, in turn, had significant direct effects on children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms at T3. Bootstrap analyses further demonstrated that parents' discrimination experiences at T1 had significant indirect effects on children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms at T3 via parental depression, harsh parenting, and coparenting conflict at T2. Our findings have important theoretical contributions and significant practical implications. Theoretically, our findings elucidate how parents' discrimination experiences may longitudinally heighten children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms by adversely affecting parental well-being and parent-child and inter-parental relationships.

Practically, our findings highlight the importance of designing and implementing community-based stigma reduction programs and family-based stigma coping interventions to reduce parents' discrimination experiences and associated adverse outcomes on well-being, parenting, marriage, and child development.