The Inner World of Adolescent Girls with Hearing Impairment

Abstract

This article explores how young females with hearing impairment respond to the developmental tasks of adolescence. Using a case study approach, the author explores Radha and Hasina's understanding and attitudes towards issues such as bodily changes, peer relationships, autonomy, economic independence, marriage and family, and personal identity. The limitations imposed by the impairment, combined with the environment to which they are exposed, may not be conducive to normal development. So, while on the one hand adolescents with hearing impairment face the same developmental needs and tasks that confront hearing adolescents, yet their passage through normal developmental stages may become more complicated. This is because the basic deprivation due to deafness is not just the sensory one of sound, but also the acquisition of communication skills. Nonetheless, instead of submitting meekly to their disability and the authority of their families, both Radha and Hasina emerge as self-assertive, individualistic and high-spirited persons who contest popular negative stereotypes of persons with disabilities. The article does not claim that the ideas contained in the two accounts are in any way representative of and equally applicable to all deaf adolescents. It is only an exploratory study, an attempt to throw light on the impact of deafness on the developmental tasks of adolescents with hearing impairment.