International Journal of

ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES

EISSN: 2313-3724, Print ISSN: 2313-626X

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 Volume 10, Issue 3 (March 2023), Pages: 205-209

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 Original Research Paper

 Parental attitudes toward the marriage of adult children with autism spectrum disorder and mental disability

 Author(s): 

 Nermeen A. Qutub *

 Affiliation(s):

 Department of Special Education, College of Education, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia

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 * Corresponding Author. 

  Corresponding author's ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3254-2595

 Digital Object Identifier: 

 https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2023.03.025

 Abstract:

For those who have autism or another mental disability, the prospect of marriage may be of concern for parents. Unfortunately, much of the literature is concerned with marital issues of the parents of grown children with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and such concerns for their children have been rarely addressed. Furthermore, while literature has addressed the issue of culture and ASD it has rarely been associated with interventions that consider cultural and socio-economic perspectives. Towards understanding and the development of the strategy to help families and professionals deal with the marriage of those with mental disabilities entering adulthood, this paper investigates if there are differences in attitudes of parents towards the marriage of their adult children based on socio-cultural status and gender in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, socio-cultural and gender factors are addressed as influencing factors for such attitudes in a country that has strong cultural attitudes to family life and gender. Towards further understanding the issue, these factors were also investigated as determinants of the attitude of the young adults themselves toward marriage. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents and their adult children. The results revealed that there were more positive attitudes towards marriage from those parents who perceived themselves to be of a higher social status and that attitudes were more positive towards males getting married. The study contributes to a gap in the research about the implications of culture for interventions for people with ASD.

 © 2022 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords: Autism, Mental disability, Marriage, Parental attitude

 Article History: Received 6 August 2022, Received in revised form 28 November 2022, Accepted 31 December 2022

 Acknowledgment 

No Acknowledgment.

 Compliance with ethical standards

 Conflict of interest: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

 Citation:

 Qutub NA (2023). Parental attitudes toward the marriage of adult children with autism spectrum disorder and mental disability. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 10(3): 205-209

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 Figures

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 Tables

 Table 1 

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