Perspectives on Childhood and Disability

Abstract

Historically, studies on disabled children have been characterized by narrow and limited ways of looking at their lives. Some historians have even characterized the study of childhood and disability as ‘a legacy of neglect’ (Safford & Safford, 1996, p. 1). When researchers have included disabled children they have typically been preoccupied with impairment, vulnerability, service use and the ‘burden’ of presumed dependency, at the expense of a more nuanced account of their everyday lives and identities (Avery, 1999; Davis, 2004; Shakespeare & Watson, 1998). The voices of the children themselves have frequently been excluded and research has, instead, highlighted the perspectives of parents and professionals. The result is that, until relatively recently, the lives of disabled children and youth have largely been seen through the eyes of adults. Over the past decades, however, there has been a notable increase in research that includes the views and perspectives of disabled children and youth, providing new insights and understandings of their lives and experiences (Asbjørnslett et al., 2013; Connors & Stalker, 2003; Egilson, 2014; Egilson & Hemmingsson, 2009; Einarsdóttir, 2007; Stalker, 2012; Watson et al., 1999; Ytterhus, 2012). This development has coincided with and been inspired by new approaches to the social studies of childhood (James & Prout, 1997), the emphasis on social and cultural understanding of disability within disability studies (Shakespeare, 2013) and a growing human rights perspective with regard to both children and disabled people.