Growing
Up
with parents who have learning difficulties
Key conclusions
supported by the study:
- The relationship
between parental competence and child outcomes is more complicated
than most current thinking allows.
- Parental competence
is resourced by the family's social network.
- Nearly all the
now-adult children in the study had maintained a valued relationship
with their families.
- There was no suggestion
of them wanting to make a clean break from their past in order
to establish an identity free from the stigma of having a parent
with learning difficulties.
- The idea that children
may be robbed of their youth by having to assume the responsibility
for 'parenting their parent' is widely overstated.
- It is the mostly
commonplace quality of people's lives as adults that is remarkable
in the context of their upbringing.
- Children's destinies
are not fixed by having a mother or father with learning difficulties.
 Growing Up with Parents
who have Learning Difficulties, Routledge, London, 1998.
|
