Abstract

ORTEGA, Patricia; SALGUERO, Alejandra  and  GARRIDO GARDUNO, Adriana. Discapacidad: paternidad y cambios familiares. Av. Psicol. Latinoam. [online]. 2007, vol.25, n.1, pp.118-125. ISSN 1794-4724.

Understanding and social image of people with mental retardation makes people affected by it to be displaced from participation in different environments of the daily life. Consequently relationships that men have with their mental retarded children can modify the exercise and experience of paternity. In this research, characteristics of the exercise of paternity were identified in certain type of families. Men of different age, socioeconomic level, and scholarship level, who took their children to special education schools, were participants. A qualitative methodology was used in this research. Results of the semistructured interviews were analyzed based in the axis “Being father of a child with mental retardation”. Results showed that these parents are a group of men that require to be studied because they are sometimes identified as a different circle of those parents of normal children. Some parents said that it is not a problem. Others linked that situation with a problematic point due to social and religious implications. Family changes were evidenced in the paternity, which are based on value judgments and concepts of normality and abnormality.

Keywords : handicap; men; parenthood qualitative methodology.

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