Trends and Issues in Serving Culturally Diverse Families of Children with Disabilities
The emphasis on cultural issues affecting families of children with disabilities is quite new and should be viewed in the context of the way parental roles have been conceptualized by professionals over the past 3 decades. Prior to the 1970s, the emphasis was on psychoanalytic approaches to parents, particularly mothers, an approach that for the most part presented the mother as a victim or patient in severe psychological crisis who needed to go through certain stages of reaction before a point of “acceptance” could be reached. This line of literature focused almost totally on White, middle-class families who could access the kinds of services offered by the psychoanalytic model. While some of the central tenets of that line of thought, such as the notion of the parent’s mourning for an ideal child, seem to be a part of most parents’ experience, the literature had two dominant limitations: the promotion of a pathological view of families of children with disabilities and total omission of the impact of differential cultural beliefs and practices on family reactions. The 1970s saw the advent of the “parent as teacher” approach, which sought to promote positive parental involvement through behavioral training programs. The successes of that approach were reported to be variable, with clear evidence of greater success with middleclass and White families, whose life circumstances, childrearing practices, and personal interaction styles were more consonant with the approaches presented by that model. The advent of P.L. 99-457 in 1986 introduced the current phase, a line of literature that reflects an ideal of the parent as partner or collaborator with professionals. As this ideal evolved into a vision of family-centered practice, issues of diverse family beliefs and practices became a crucial focus.