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ScholarWorks > HHS > Social Work > JSSW > Vol. 51 > Iss. 1 (2024)

 

Keywords

deaf, hearing-abled, hard of hearing, hearing impaired, children, oralism, American Sign Language, ASL, trauma, phenomenology, critical disability theory, disability justice

Abstract

d/Deaf Americans constitute a cultural and linguistic minority in America. Most d/Deaf people, 90–95%, are born to hearing-abled parents. By a wide margin, hearing-abled families prefer that their d/Deaf children learn spoken English and enroll their children in oral-education programs. Existing literature must highlight the unique struggles d/Deaf people face when growing up in hearing-abled families. By interviewing 14 d/Deaf adults born into hearing-abled families, this study explored the lived realities of growing up different in ability than other family members. These d/Deaf adults spoke about their childhood feelings of shame and isolation and ongoing frustrations. Respondents also often spoke about traumatic experiences that are commonplace in the Deaf community but largely unheard of in the hearing-abled world, such as lack of access to information that others in their families had easy access to and feelings of shame and low self-esteem. Respondents shared their thoughts about their childhood and their frustration regarding language access. Informed by critical disability theory and disability justice principles, these interviews provide standpoint epistemology of the experiences of growing up disabled in a hearing-abled family.

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