Preface

Summary

This book is about deaf young people and their families. It is a follow up to the study reported in The Deaf Child and his Family (George Allen and Unwin, 1976) republished as Deaf Children and their Families to coincide with the publication of this book. In the first study, 122 families of young deaf children were interviewed. The authors of the present book set out some 18 years later to trace as many of a sample of 101 of the original families as possible, and established contact with 91 of them. This book is an account of the interviews with both the parents and the deaf young people themselves, and also includes comparative information from the earlier research and material from group discussions conducted with some of the young people who were interviewed.

The purpose of this book is to give the perspective of the young people and families themselves rather than a professional view. The period from the first interviews to the second set was a time of great change in the understanding of deafness and in professional approaches to it. This book allows participants to reflect not only on the consequences of deafness within their own lives, but also on the changing context for deaf people. It also allows a consideration of the similarities and dissimilarities in the views of parents and their sons and daughters on various issues and an examination of factors in early life that may relate to later development.