Parents' perceptions regarding couple relationships of their adult children with intellectual disabilities

Abstract

Background: A particular challenge facing parents of children with intellectual disabilities occurs when their adult children with intellectual disabilities has an interest in pursuing couple relationships. This study explores parents' perceptions regarding the nature of couple relationships, the right of their adult children with intellectual disabilities to pursue such relationships, the difficulties their children encounter and their own role in providing support.Method: Interviews were conducted with 30 parents of adults with intellectual disabilities who had left home for independent and semi-independent living arrangements. A thematic content analysis was conducted.

Sexuality, Education and Support for People with Intellectual Disabilities: A Systematic Review of the Attitudes of Support Staff and Relatives

“…Attitudes toward the sexual rights of people with intellectual disabilities were identified in six studies that focused on support staff [38][39][40][41][42][43], one study on relatives [44], and three studies that combined both perspectives [45][46][47]. Quotes in these studies primarily reflected supportive attitudes.…”

“…Heterogeneous attitudes were expressed toward the sexual needs and feelings of people with intellectual disabilities within five studies focusing on support staff [38,40,42,48,49], five on relatives [44,[50][51][52][53], and two studies that took the perspectives of both into account [47,54]. On the one hand, several support staff and relatives agreed that people with intellectual disabilities have the same sexual feelings, in the words of a relative "as the rest of us" [51, p. 285; 40, 47].…”

“…Part of the reported attitudes of support staff [i.e., five studies; ], relatives [i.e., five studies; 44,50,51,52,53], or both [i.e., three studies; 46,57,58] touched upon the assumed ability of people with intellectual disabilities to understand sexuality. Three topics emerged.…”

“…Attitudes toward intimate relationships of people with intellectual disabilities were found within eight studies based on the perspectives of support staff [43,48,49,55,[59][60][61]65], seven studies focused on relatives [44, 50-53, 62, 66], and one study addressing both groups [47]. Both support staff and relatives cited various reasons for why people with intellectual disabilities pursued intimate relations, namely: because they are supposed to; it is important; out of desire to kiss, hug, and/or engage in intercourse; and out of a desire to love and care for a partner [44,48,49,52,55]. Among both support staff and relatives, some shared the belief that relationships are frightening, and that the possibility of relationships provoked concerns around their vulnerability [43,44,46,48,49,53,65].…”

“…Both support staff and relatives cited various reasons for why people with intellectual disabilities pursued intimate relations, namely: because they are supposed to; it is important; out of desire to kiss, hug, and/or engage in intercourse; and out of a desire to love and care for a partner [44,48,49,52,55]. Among both support staff and relatives, some shared the belief that relationships are frightening, and that the possibility of relationships provoked concerns around their vulnerability [43,44,46,48,49,53,65]. According to support staff, for men, this vulnerability primarily concerned the risk of becoming aggressive, whereas for women (unwanted) pregnancies was routinely emphasized [49].…”