ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a review of theory and evidence about parenting with disability understood within the sociocultural context of being parents and being disabled in 21st-century societies. The chapter begins by presenting the international rights framework which asserts the rights of persons with disabilities to parenthood. The context for the review is provided by discourses about disability over time and across cultures, which in turn influence and are influenced by theoretical understandings about disability. This contextual frame is followed by consideration of the theoretical underpinnings of research about parenting with disability and issues of research design and method. Empirical evidence is presented on the barriers and challenges encountered by parents within the family-societal-cultural context, and outcomes for their children. Parenting support and programmatic interventions for parents with intellectual disabilities are discussed within the context of available evaluation or outcome effectiveness data. Primary attention is given to parenting by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, a focus which simply reflects the volume of empirical evidence that has been collected regarding these parents. The chapter concludes with a conceptual framework for moving the research agenda forward in line with international developments in sociocultural understanding of how disability arises as a complex interaction of universal and context-dependent factors.
