A differential research design to compare the level of parenting stress of normal and mentally challenged children was undertaken on a sample of 30 mentally challenged children and 60 normal children of age group 5-10 years. Abidin’s (1995) Parenting stress index- short form was used to assess the level of parenting stress. The results revealed that higher per cent of parents of mentally challenged had clinically significant parenting stress (73.4%) than parents of the normal children (21.7%).