Experiences of Parents with Visual Impairments who are Raising Children

Abstract

Sixty-seven parents who are visually impaired revealed strategies for their children's safety, transportation, homework, and other parenting tasks and provided information about the emotional impact on their children and others’ reactions to them as parents. Recommendations for current and future parents who are visually impaired and professionals are discussed.

Being a parent's eyes and ears: emotional literacy and empathy of children whose parents have a sensory disability

“…Examining differences in the empathy index by study groups while monitoring the background variables, it was found that the level of empathy among children of parents with a sensory disability is significantly higher than that of children of parents without sensory disability. These results are consistent with the literature, where parents with a sensory disability indicate that their children have great empathy and acceptance of differences in others (Rosenblum, Hong, and Harris, 2009). Even the children themselves feel that their family experience had developed and encouraged their capacity for empathy towards others (Preston, 1994).…”

“…Parents with a visual disability also indicated that their children are more compassionate, empathetic, verbal, mature and accepting of people who are different (Rosenblum, Hong, and Harris, 2009).…”

“…According to Rosenblum, Hong and Harris (), parents with visual disabilities reported, among other things, that their children are more compassionate, empathetic, verbal, mature and accepting of differences in other people. Some even reported that their child gradually began to take responsibility for the needs of the parents.…”

A phenomenological investigation into the impact of parenthood: Giving a voice to mothers with visual impairment in the United Kingdom

“…In previous studies on parenting with visual impairment, a shift is evident from the medical model (Ware & Schwab, 1971) to the social (Conley-Jung & Olkin, 2001; Rosenblum et al (2009). Thus, the perspective has moved from where the visual impairment is seen as a parental deficit with care or treatment around that deficit as the appropriate response to the social model, emanating from societal attitudes rather than intra-individual, (Oliver, 1996).…”

“…Negative, individualised medical notions of disability remain prevalent in research generally concerned with parenthood. With the important exception of a few voices in the field, namely, Conley-Jung and Olkin (2001), Kirshbaum and Olkin (2002), and Rosenblum, Hong, and Harris (2009) – all US based – and Olsen and Clarke (2003), there is still at best an ambivalence or exclusion from the mainstream in terms of research on parents with sight loss, at worst an attitude of pathologising.…”