 "Nobody's just normal, you know": The social creation of developmental disabilityValerie Leiter Social Science & Medicine, 2007, vol. 65, issue 8, 1630-1641 Abstract: This paper examines the process through which early childhood developmental disability is socially created within a US public program called Early Intervention (EI). In doing so, the paper analyses and links the social creation of early childhood disability as a category at both the macro-level level and at the micro-level. The analysis is based on qualitative interview data from 31 parents and 19 professions involved in EI programs in Massachusetts. At the macro-level, the paper addresses how federal legislation and state regulations establish the boundary between normalcy and disability. At the micro-level, it analyses adults' social creation of developmental disability, measured as impairment. The paper also investigates the impairment categories that are produced by these processes, exposing the kinds of early childhood developmental delays that have been legislated as worthy of public intervention and discusses some implications of the disability determination process. Keywords: USA; Childhood; Developmental; disability; Impairment; Normalcy; Early; Intervention; Parents (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:65:y:2007:i:8:p:1630-1641 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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