Increasing Parental Self-Acceptance: The Important Role of Parenting Self-Efficacy for Parents of Children with Special Needs in Makassar

Parents who have children with special needs tend to reject when they first find out that their children are diagnosed with special needs, on the one hand parents who have confidence in caring for their children make it easy to get to the stage of self-acceptance. This study aims to determine whether there is a relationship between parenting self-efficacy and self-acceptance of parents who have children with autism spectrum disorder in Makassar City. This study used Spearman Rho correlation analysis technique. Respondents in this study were 146 subjects obtained using accidental sampling technique. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between parenting self-efficacy and self-acceptance in parents (r = 0.809, p = 0.000 <0.05) indicating that the higher the parenting self-efficacy score, the higher the self-acceptance in parents who have children with special needs. This research can be a reference for parents who have children with special needs to be able to improve parenting self-efficacy and self-acceptance. Suggestions for future researchers to pair self-acceptance variables with other variables to see other factors that have a greater relationship to self-acceptance, as well as using other methods in data analysis or the research implementation process. The implication of this research is an understanding of the need for parents who have children with special needs to increase parenting self-efficacy and self-acceptance, so that they can have a positive influence in the form of proper care for children with special needs so that children grow and develop into better individuals for the future.