Latin American Perspectives on Parenthood and Disability: Vulnerability, Risk, and Social Inclusion

Abstract

Despite the growing recognition and acceptance of disabled people’s sexuality, there are barriers to parenthood anchored in metaphors of vulnerability and risk. The social inclusion of disabled parents seems both desirable and risky, making disabled parenthood one of the current frontiers of inclusion for the disabled body. The interest in disabled parenting in Anglo-Saxon academic literature has barely been considered related to Latin American production. This article aims to address this gap by exploring the Latin American scientific community’s understanding of parenthood and disability. To do so, we conduct a pragmatic discourse analysis of Latin American scientific articles in Web of Science (in English) and RedALyC and SciELO (in Spanish). Our findings show how the Latin American scientific community draws on different models of disability—in some cases introducing an intersectional perspective—that reproduce metaphors of vulnerability/risk regarding parenthood. We conclude by highlighting the importance of establishing dialogues between critical perspectives on disability from the Anglo-Saxon and Latin American contexts to address the complexities of the reproduction processes of disabled people. These dialogues can contribute to problematising the metaphor of vulnerability/risk currently associated with disabled parenthood.