‘You don’t know how big this heart is’: parental accounts of Triple X super-daughters’ life course and emerging community citizenship

Abstract

Triple X is largely unheard of: in global medical science where there is only a partial knowledge, and in welfare and community-based institutions which have virtually no knowledge of it at all. This article focusses on the unheard voices of Triple X families: on the reflections of ten UK parents on nurturing their daughters with Triple X throughout their childhood and into adulthood and the world of work. Layers of daughters’ individual characteristics, institutional bodies’ knowledge and preparedness to adapt, and centrally, parental interventions in daughters’ lives are assessed to consider these young women’s own autonomy and community citizenship as they consolidate. Using a Bourdieusian framework, and testing against a benchmark of cultural and social capital, the article assesses the position of families of varying social classes who are differently able to mitigate institutional inadequacy. But equally, the article looks into the notion of disability as a factor independent of the standard system of generational capital transfer. Granted that (as it emerges) they effectively live their lives outside the typical familial socio-economic structure, adult daughters’ individual abilities and achievements relating to their own growing social consciousness and contributiveness are investigated.