A Ground Theory Analysis of Fathers’ Stress on Rearing of Childre n with Disabilities in Korea

Abstract

This study aims to examine the interview data collected based on understanding and looking at the fathers’ experience of raising children with disabilities according to the Ground theory. The subjects of this study were 6 Korean fathers who rear children with disabilities. The research was conducted by indepth interviews and recording of transcripts and data analysis was carried out by on the basis of the Ground theory of Strauss and Corbin. The results of the study are as follows; firstly, the main element in the rearing experience of fathers with children with disabilities was ‘hopelessness’, and the causal conditions acting on ‘hopelessness’ were ‘devastation’ and ‘powerlessness’. The situational factors which influenced ‘devastation’ and ‘powerlessness’ were ‘wife’s rearing attitude’, in other words ‘differences of opinion with wife’, ‘education values’, ‘financial status’, and ‘education system’. Secondly, when we analyzed the situational relations to fathers’ rearing experience of children with disabilities, social gaze and educational welfare environment existed in the outermost concentric circles while in the innermost concentric circles, a father himself, a child with a disability and wife’s rearing attitude on rearing were appeared to develop by interacting around the father. Thirdly, fathers with children with disabilities were classified into five types, according to the paradigm model which are adopted appraisal standards such as ‘the degree of hopelessness’, ‘wife’s rearing attitude’, ‘education values’, ‘financial status’, ‘education system’, ‘immersion on work’, ‘the severity of disability’ and ‘disposition’. In order to alleviate the ‘hopelessness’ of the fathers of children with disabilities, three measures are required: social gaze, financial status and the improvement of the educational welfare environment.