title: Interview with parents of children with Down syndrome: their perceptions and feelings.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To obtain information about the life of the families having children with Down Syndrome through an interview with parents. The authors focused on the effect of having a child with Down syndrome on the parents, factors causing problems on the family and the characteristics of a family with children having Down syndrome.
  
  
  METHODS
  In the present study, the authors evaluated the social, economic and individual problems of the parents (n = 100) who had a child with DS by an interview consisting of 16 questions about the families' characteristics, their relations with each other and other people and their attitudes towards the child with DS . The control group consisted of 100 subjects having healthy children who were recruited from the outpatient clinics of the same hospital.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The authors found that children with DS mostly spend their time with their mothers, and mothers reported higher levels of stress than fathers. The rate of mothers who reported higher possibility to divorce in the future is much higher than fathers (p < 0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  High rates of marital and parental problems, particularly perceived by the mothers, observed in this study are the main issues which should be considered during the assessment of those children in order to cope with the problems and improve both patients' and families' life quality.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Genetics, Ege University, Izmir, Turkey. asude.alpman@ege.edu.tr
authors.forename: Asude
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Durmaz
authors.forename: Tufan
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Cankaya
authors.forename: Burak
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Durmaz
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vahabi
authors.forename: Cumhur
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gunduz
authors.forename: Ozgur
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Cogulu
authors.forename: Ferda
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ozkinay
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D004314:Down Syndrome; D004644:Emotions; D005195:Family Relations; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage; D008875:Middle Aged; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014421:Turkey