Faith and Respect: Parenting the Urban African American Child with Autism

Background: Accessibility to health care for urban African American children is undercut by racial and economic differences that can delay families’ seeking and receiving health care for their child, putting the African American child with autism at higher risk for preventable delays to interventions and poorer long-term outcomes. Cultural factors such as access to health care and cultural knowledge of autism within the African American community have been implicated as barriers to timely interventions. Mindful of these factors, researchers and clinicians have proposed that therapeutic interventions have been underutilized by those who need it the most, such as low-income African American children with autism.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to conduct an in-depth exploration to discover the cultural care meanings, values, beliefs, practices and cultural ways of urban African American families caring for their child with autism, with the focus of this abstract on parenting beliefs, values and practices.

Methods: An ethnonursing qualitative study was conducted to discover and systematically analyze meanings of care and cultural ways of urban African American families caring for their child with autism. Fifty-two participants were interviewed and in-depth field observations conducted in the environmental context of their homes, schools and community events.  Participants included 24 family members of children with autism from 8 African American families and 28 health and school professionals. Data were analyzed and findings reported as they emerged from the patterns as themes.

Results: Parenting the urban African American child with autism meant that families drew on their faith in God and faith in their family as a means to gain strength, receive support, maintain hope and coping with their daily stressors. Faith in God and family was challenged when other family members demonstrated disbelief about an autism diagnosis or when coping with expressions of “bad parenting” as the cause for their child’s behavior. Parenting also meant that giving and receiving respect was first learned at home including respect for the multigenerational traditions in parenting and child discipline. While respecting generational practices, families negotiated disciplinary ways differently for their child with autism. Families also blended traditional and non-traditional ways in home-tailoring therapeutic interventions often broadly framed by clinicians, therapists and educators. Diversities in parenting among single versus dual parent families and maternal versus paternal parenting offered variable strategies and styles to the African American child with autism.

Conclusions: The findings substantiated that faith in God and faith in the family combined with respect for multigenerational disciplinary ways and creation of new ways was core to parenting urban African American children with autism. When clinicians, therapists and educators have knowledge and understanding of cultural parenting practices and act on that understanding in respectful and culturally sensitive ways, they have the potential to mitigate the barriers to access as families seek or receive interventions for their child with autism. Future directions are to employ community based participatory research methods to develop and test interventions that affect urban families seeking and receiving treatments for their African American child with autism.