Introduction: Special Issue on Families and Disabilities

Abstract

Articles featured in Volume 17 of Michigan Family Review focus on issues faced by families when a member, or members, have disabilities. Family researchers of have often focused on how physical (visible) affects life and wellbeing. In this special issue, we offer a selection of articles that highlight cognitive (often invisible) disabilities and mental health, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Dementia due to aging, learning disabilities, and child abuse.Shildrick (2002) and other scholars suggest that we should think of a as an That is, broadly defined, a is typically something that impedes one's ability to navigate their social world and relationships, or participate fully in society. This or impediment could be physical, cognitive, or emotional. Typically we think of as related to the physical body first and foremost but scholars remind us that cognitive and/or mental disabilities affect individuals as much as any physical can. Social scientists and advocates further refer to disabilities as socially constructed. This is not to say that disabilities do not have a biological, physiological, neurological, or physical reality but, rather, that neither nor can be defined in purely biomedical terms, because social arrangements and expectations make essential contributions to and disability (Wendell 1996: 57). In other words, when it comes to disabilities, the biological and the social work together in the creation and understanding of disability, as well as who should be responsible for the care of the disabled or impaired. This is how or becomes a family issue.Societies like the United States tend to relegate members of society who are defined as having a (or to the private realm - that is, the realm of the family. Disability, by default, then becomes a personal and problem. When disabilities cause individuals to be unable to fulfill their basic needs, our first instinct is to expect members to provide special care. When there are barriers to disabled individuals' health care, paid work, or mobility, it is also often members who are expected to pick up the slack. When disabled individuals experience barriers or constraints to their participation in society in any form, or any difficulty at all in living their daily lives, they may also take out their frustrations on or share these feelings with members. Thus, families deal with the consequences of the barriers and constraints that disabled individuals may face. When disabled individuals experience physical or emotional symptoms of their impairments, it is often members who must negotiate these symptoms. When impaired individuals need or want an advocate, it also often members who step to their aid. Familial units are called upon, expected to be there for, and negotiate and on a daily basis.Ideas within the literature on studies can be useful in expanding how we conceptualize familial experiences and think about how families negotiate or impairment. Disability scholars teach us to 'separat[e] out impairment (that is, the functional limitations of our bodies and minds, or the actual physical or cognitive disabilities) from the subjectivity of (that is, the attitudes towards or the structural barriers that a disabled person might face in society) (Morris, 2001, p. 2). Hughes and Patterson (1997) and Thomas (1999) further remind us that we need to pay attention to the embodied experiences of impairment, while also paying attention to the social barriers, new relations and interactions, and personal experiences associated with physical or cognitive impairment. As Thomas (1999) explains, is not a fixed property of a person but, rather, a 'social relational' entity, which means that how one lives with a physical or cognitive is more telling about what an truly is for a person than any material reality of the body or mind (Shildrick, 2002). …