Browsing by Author "Suomalainen, Iina"

There is little earlier research on the subjective well-being of parents with children with ADHD. Earlier research on the subject has mainly focused on the stress that parents experience. Earlier research shows that parents whose children have been diagnosed with ADHD experience more stress than parents with children that do not have ADHD. The purpose of this study is to describe the subjective well-being of parents whose children have ADHD by studying blog texts that parents themselves have written. This research depicts the components of subjective well-being that are present in the blog texts and how this can be seen in the everyday life of the child and parent. This research is a qualitative Bachelor’s thesis, and it was carried out using narrative case study as a method. The research material was picked out between 17.11. –7.12.2017 from three different blogs which are all written by a mother with a child with ADHD. The blog texts describe the everyday life of the parent of a child with ADHD. The research was theory-based and carried out using content analysis to study different themes. All of the components of subjective well-being were detectable in the blog texts: pleasant and unpleasant affects, life satisfaction and domain satisfaction. However, it appeared that there are more unpleasant affects than pleasant affects which can have a negative effect on subjective well-being. The results show that parenthood with a child with ADHD is experienced as challenging and this can be seen through the different themes that were apparent in the blog texts. According to the results of this research it can be stated that it would be essential to pay more attention to the subjective well-being of parents of children with ADHD and develop possible support mechanisms to support their subjective well-being.