STRATEGI COPING STRESS SINGLE MOTHER YANG MEMILIKI ANAK USIA DEWASA DENGAN DOWN SYNDROME

Abstract

deally, a family consists of parents and their child. Nevertheless, there are some families with the absence of one parent in parenting child. This condition is well- known as single-parent. One of the factors is the death of spouse. In the absence of one parent, surely increase the burden in caring a child. Even more if the children were born with down-syndrome. Difficulties as a single mother may cause stress in herself. Many problems keep coming which lead mother to do coping. The objective of this research is to discover the stress-coping strategies in a single mother of grown-up child with down-syndrome. The method applied for this qualitative research is case study. The subjects are two single-mothers of grown-up child with down-syndrome. This research explained coping strategies used by single-mother which are problem focused coping and emotion focused coping. The study did find that a single mother likely use problem focused coping such as searching for down-syndrome information, be part of community, and turn to her parents’ advice. In preparation for coping, there are several stages must be done before attaining to acceptance stage. Those stages are the support from family, religion background, information given by friends about how to take care children with down-syndrome, positive thinking about the children, and positive activities which is done every day. The expected result of this study is to provide information how to manage stress for a single mother of child with down syndrome.