Handicapped Children

Loving your child is not necessarily part of human nature and should not be taken for granted. Parental feelings are dependent upon our preconceptions of a child's appearance. Nevertheless, this cultural notion has been powerfully constituted as a "natural" part of the social myth of bonding. It is this myth that the author sets to expose by presenting data on parents' behavior toward 1,450 children in 3 major hospitals in Israel over a period of six years. Meira Weiss shows that 68.4% of the appearance-impaired newborns were abandoned by their parents, whereas 93% of the newborns suffering from internal defects--even severe ones--were "adopted." She also describes patterns of seclusion, neglect, and abuse such appearance-impaired children were subjected to at home. Both the rich ethnography and the lucid analysis contained in this book offer unique theoretical insights and social implications that should not be missed by anyone interested in the pragmatics of parenthood and the social and psychological aspects of the body.

The study of disability and its clinical treatment has become exponentially more complex as ever more interventions are developed that increase the life span. Consequently, developmental challenges facing people with disabilities and their families change throughout a lifetime.

Unlike other texts, which concentrate only on the childhood years, Disability and the Family Life Cycle covers the entire life span within the family context, emphasizing maturational issues, with each chapter focusing on a different period of life. Disability and the Family Life-Cycle is the only book to cover such topics as adult sons and daughters with disabilities, the developmental needs of the disabled elderly, and the needs of spouses and siblings.

Dale Borman Fink, the author of the only book on inclusion of youth with special needs in after school child care, now presents the first book to examine the experiences of children with disabilities participating in youth programs alongside their typical peers. Using a case study technique, he probes into the issues and dynamics that influence the increasing participation of kids with disabilities in such activities as Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and park and recreation programs.

The growing prominence of ecological and social systems perspectives in the child development and family studies fields is having a significant impact on the conceptualization and delivery of early intervention services. The exclusive focus on the handicapped or developmentally delayed child is gradually giving way to a much broader focus on the family as a system. This book brings together the conceptual and empirical work of a number of scholars whose current research is at the leading edge of these shifts. Marfo's volume has an international appeal--but perhaps more significantly it affords American researchers a unique opportunity to learn more about the intervention field.

This volume reports the results of a large-scale survey of families who adopted children with "special needs": older children, minority children, handicapped children, or sibling groups. It assesses perceptions of social work services, parent-child relationships, family functioning, child behavior, school performance, and other aspects of adoptive family life. Rosenthal and Groze compare outcomes for different types of adoptions, including adoptions of children of different ages, adoptions by minority families, transracial adoptions, single-parent adoptions, adoptions by less educated and less wealthy families, adoptions by foster parents, adoptions of children with handicaps, and sibling group adoptions.