Parents with Disabilities & Their Children: Rights, Barriers, Supports & Treatment

Despite a dark history marked by the eugenics movement, increasing numbers of people with disabilities are choosing to become parents. Recent research reveals that more than 4 million parents (six percent of American mothers and fathers) are disabled. This number will unquestionably increase as more people with disabilities exercise a broader range of lifestyle options as a result of social integration, civil rights, and new adaptive technologies. Likewise, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of veterans who are returning from war with service-connected disabilities, some of whom may already be parents and others who will enter parenthood after acquiring their disability. The right to parent without interference is protected by the U.S. Constitution and balanced by the judicially recognized power of the state to interfere to protect the well-being of its children. This book provides a comprehensive review of the barriers and facilitators people with diverse disabilities (including intellectual and developmental disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, sensory disabilities, and physical disabilities) experience when they are exercising their fundamental right to create and maintain families, with a focus on the persistent, systemic, and pervasive discrimination against parents with disabilities.