Parental Reports of Stigma Associated with Child’s Disorder of Sex Development

Table 7

Reported stigma in DSD compared to parents of children with epilepsy.

How strongly do you agree or disagree with these comments?	DSD sample, mothers; (n = 96)	Chronic epilepsy sample^a; (n = 171)			New-onset seizures sample^a; (n = 210)
	M (SD)	M (SD)		ES	M (SD)		ES
People who know that my child has a urogenital (seizure) condition treat him/her differently	1.76 (0.88)	2.65 (1.13)	<.001^*	−0.88	3.00 (1.99)	<.001^*	−0.81
It really doesn’t matter what I say to people about my child’s urogenital (seizure) condition, they usually have their minds made up	2.29 (1.13)	2.68 (1.13)	.007^*	−0.35	3.12 (2.01)	<.001^*	−0.51
^bBecause of the urogenital (seizure) condition, my child will have problems in finding a boyfriend or girlfriend (husband or wife).	2.47 (1.13)	1.98 (0.93)	.060	0.47	1.50 (1.08)	.001^*	0.88
In many people’s minds, having a urogenital (seizure) condition attaches a stigma or label to my child	2.8 (1.29)	3.28 (1.16)	.002^*	−0.39	3.70 (2.07)	<.001^*	−0.52

Reference [30] ; ^bitem appeared in Study 2 only (n = 15; child age range 8–16 years) value associated with comparison of DSD and epilepsy sample.
^*Denoting P values that remain statistically significant after set-wise Bonferroni correction (or that are <.05 when correction not needed).