Literature Review on Provision of Appropriate and Accessible ...

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5.0 Parenting
5.1 Introduction
Being a parent is an important marker of adulthood and maturity. Women
with intellectual disabilities have been viewed as childlike, implying
that they are not capable of taking on adult roles. Stereotypical views of
women with intellectual disabilities make it difficult for groups in society
to imagine they could be parents. This has led to many challenges for
people with intellectual disability who become or want to become parents
(Llewellyn and McConnell, 2005).
Support to People with an Intellectual Disability who are
Accessible
and Appropriate of Provision on <strong>Review</strong> <strong>Literature</strong>
Experiencing Crisis Pregnancy
According to Booth et al. (2005), writing from the UK perspective, several
factors make it difficult to estimate the number of parents labelled with
intellectual disability. These include the lack of a common definition
of intellectual disability, variable population screening and diagnostic
practices, inconsistent record-keeping, and the invisibility of many
parents to official agencies. Consequently, mothers and fathers labelled
with intellectual disability constitute a hidden population, whose size is
hard to estimate. In the UK estimates vary widely, from 23,000 to 250,000
(DH and DfES, 2007). An English study (Emerson et al. 2005) found
that almost 7% of adults with ‘learning difficulties’ were parents. Pixa-
Kettner (2008) conducted a survey on parents with intellectual disability
in Germany. Questionnaires requesting information about all children
born to adults with intellectual disability since 1990 were sent to service
providers (n=701) in the summer of 2005. The study confirmed the trend
from an earlier study carried out in 199, of a continually increasing
number of parents with intellectual disability. A total of 1584 cases of
parenthood were reported for the period 1990 – 2005. The proportion
of children living with at least one biological parent with an intellectual
disability had increased from 40% to 57% between 1998 and 2005. At the
time of the review, comprehensive data on the total number of parents
with learning disabilities in Ireland was not available.
Despite difficulties in estimating correct numbers for this population,
across a number of countries including the UK, Australia, and Germany
there are increasing numbers of parents with learning disabilities in
contact with services (DH and DfES, 2007; Bradley, Toft and Collins, 2000;
Guinea, 2001). Pixa-Kettner makes the point that the increasing number