A survey conducted by Molteno (2001) shows that the parents of children with special educational needs are
more stressed than parents of normal children, mothers showing a higher level of stress than fathers. They
worried more about the difficult behavior of these children, but felt, at the same time, an excessive need to
protect them. Fathers felt them more like a financial burden.
Other studies (Kenny, 2000; Jones, 2005) have shown that parents are more stressed when they learn that the
child has a mental disability rather than when finding out that he has another type of deficiency. They are not
harder to accept by the family, but parents are more concerned about their future.
Regarding the future prospect, some studies (Mitchekk, Hauser-Cram, 2010) have shown that the goals which
the mentally impaired aspire to disagree with their previous achievements and are not realistic. For them,
previous successes or failures are highly relevant and, by relating to these, they prospect their future activity.
Based on these premises, we have formulated the following hypotheses that have been tested on a sample of
Romania population, also as an attempt to draw a possible comparison with the results of other studies and
research: