الفهرس 
AcknowledgementOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The parents of the handicapped children face a number of special problems in -thair daily living which affect their social and reproductive behaviour. This study was initiated to detect the influenoe of the handicapped child on the reproduotive behaviour of their parents. The study dealt exclueively with the parents who live in Alexandria and had school aged children with oertain types of handioaps. It dealt only with the parents of the blind children. deafmutea, .mentally retarded, skeletally handicapped and epileptic children. The total size of the sample reached 700. An interview was held with both parents of each child of the sample. Alao 700 parents of the control group had been pur~osively seleoted as n6ighbour~ of the sample studied. Interviewed schedules were designed for the parents of the handicapped children and the parents of the control group. Analysis of the colleoted data revealed that the crlea~ arose by the presenoe of handioapped Case! imposed physioal ahd .psychological stre sS6sforthe most of the parents. About one third of those parents showed soolal disturban. 06. Such stresses presented by the handicapped children affected the reproductive behaviour of their parents. studying th6 reproductive practices of the sample revealed that 212 (30.3) of the parents of handioapped ohildren initially planned their family size com~ared to 276 (J9.4) of the control group. It was demQAstrated that the presence of the handioapped children significantlY affected the initial plan of thoir parents. The majority of thoae parents ohanged th~1r plan either to get lass or more children. The direction of change influenced by numerous factors suoh as the type of handicap, the presence of other oases of handicap in the family and the time of deteotion of the handicapped case. Irrespeotive of the previous plan, this study revealed that r large group of parents decided to have children afte~ the crises of having a handioapped child. By further investig ation about this behaviour of parents, it was found that tne mothers insisted on seconding their handioapped children lUore than ’~he fathera. The educated parents also were mora interested to second tha1r handicapped children than the non-educated. The parents oi the mentally retarded children showed great insistenoe on seconding such children more than the parents of other tYP05 of handicap. Although the oonSan guinity played great role in the pre~Gnce of the handicapped childr6n, it was found that the majority of the parents who seconded their handicapped children were consanguineous. The study demonstrated that there was no signifioant difference between the number of living children of both families of the handicapped children and the control group. Such finding most probably waS the direct result of the actual reproduotiv6 practices of the parents of the handi capped children. Later on, after lengthy experience with the injurious problems of having handicapped ch1ldr8n the parents demonstrated some ohangse of their reproductive behaviour.^leng