Disabling Families

This article was written by Sarah H. Lorr and published in Stanford Law Review.

“This Article argues that the family regulation system not only discriminates against disabled parents but also produces disability. It identifies and theorizes three modalities of this production: (1) construction, (2) creation, and (3) reinscription. First, the family regulation system constructs the social category of disability by assuming parents bearing a disability label are unfit, then stigmatizing and separating them from their children. Second, the family regulation system creates disability by causing or exacerbating impairments that contribute to or cause disabilities among parents and their families. Third, the family regulation system reinscribes disability by failing to provide appropriate services or accommodations to disabled parents and then blaming a parent’s disability when a termination of parental rights occurs. In these three ways, the family regulation.”