Disabled Parents Beware - You Have No Parenting Rights!
Joanna Elizabeth Karpasea-Jones
June 16, 2009
You´re nine months pregnant, your doctor has given you a glowing bill of health, you´ve bought the breast pump, the car seat and the baby clothes and you have enough diapers to fill a room. You have decided on names and are just waiting for your new bundle to arrive. There´s just one problem. You are a disabled mother.
In this age of progressive thinking, you´d be forgiven for thinking that you have as many parenting rights as an able parent.
As a young, first time mother I just assumed that by being pregnant and giving birth, that gave me the automatic right to be a mother to my child. I learnt the hard way that that isn´t the case. The nurses refused to let me take my baby home until they had watched me change her diaper to ´prove´ that I could do it, and if I thought it´d get any easier over the years, I was wrong. Nurses would turn up at my home unannounced to check up on how I was doing with my children, I was reported to social services for taking my child to a doctor and the doctor had stated in his referral that ´there were disability issues´.
When deciding to home school my children, I was referred again because they thought my children were acting as ´carers´ for me – an assumption they never would have made had I been able bodied.
After 13 years of unwanted interference, I decided to look up my parenting rights, and I was shocked to find I didn´t have any. The UK´s Disability Discrimination Act of 2005 has sections on flat access to public buildings, accessible transport, equal opportunities in education and jobs and access to medical care, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing on disabled parenting and nothing to protect a disabled person´s right to parent a child. The Directgov UK site says:
Disabled parents have the same rights as non-disabled parents. There is no 'disabled parents' legislation as such, but certain legislation and guidance protects the rights of disabled adults - including in their roles as parents.´
Without specific disabled parent´s legislation, government can say a disabled person has as many rights as an able person, but this doesn´t work in practice, as there is nothing legal to protect the parent-child relationship. On telephoning the Disabled Parents Network, I discovered that statistically more disabled parents than able parents have their children removed by social services. Narrow minded social workers, playgroup leaders or even obstetricians can make life difficult simply because they are not used to dealing with a physically impaired parent, and if you make an unconventional parenting choice, such as co-sleeping instead of using a crib, then you can expect to have a great deal more pressure put on you by authority.
Disabled American mothers fare no better. The Americans With Disabilities Act 2005 (ADA) has provisions for equal employment opportunities, access to commercial facilities, transportation, telecommunications, fair housing, voting accessibility, air carrier access and equal education, but there is nothing, not one paragraph, on a disabled person´s right to have a baby and parent that baby in peace without infringement of her personal family life. It is as if the idea of a physically impaired person being a mom or dad is somehow unthinkable in our perfect society.
I enquired with the Supreme Court about how to go about adding a parenting rights section to the act, and was told to write to my member of parliament.
I did so, twice. Her response?
She didn´t write back. I did however, get a Christmas card.
In this age of progressive thinking, you´d be forgiven for thinking that you have as many parenting rights as an able parent.
As a young, first time mother I just assumed that by being pregnant and giving birth, that gave me the automatic right to be a mother to my child. I learnt the hard way that that isn´t the case. The nurses refused to let me take my baby home until they had watched me change her diaper to ´prove´ that I could do it, and if I thought it´d get any easier over the years, I was wrong. Nurses would turn up at my home unannounced to check up on how I was doing with my children, I was reported to social services for taking my child to a doctor and the doctor had stated in his referral that ´there were disability issues´.
When deciding to home school my children, I was referred again because they thought my children were acting as ´carers´ for me – an assumption they never would have made had I been able bodied.
After 13 years of unwanted interference, I decided to look up my parenting rights, and I was shocked to find I didn´t have any. The UK´s Disability Discrimination Act of 2005 has sections on flat access to public buildings, accessible transport, equal opportunities in education and jobs and access to medical care, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing on disabled parenting and nothing to protect a disabled person´s right to parent a child. The Directgov UK site says:
Disabled parents have the same rights as non-disabled parents. There is no 'disabled parents' legislation as such, but certain legislation and guidance protects the rights of disabled adults - including in their roles as parents.´
Without specific disabled parent´s legislation, government can say a disabled person has as many rights as an able person, but this doesn´t work in practice, as there is nothing legal to protect the parent-child relationship. On telephoning the Disabled Parents Network, I discovered that statistically more disabled parents than able parents have their children removed by social services. Narrow minded social workers, playgroup leaders or even obstetricians can make life difficult simply because they are not used to dealing with a physically impaired parent, and if you make an unconventional parenting choice, such as co-sleeping instead of using a crib, then you can expect to have a great deal more pressure put on you by authority.
Disabled American mothers fare no better. The Americans With Disabilities Act 2005 (ADA) has provisions for equal employment opportunities, access to commercial facilities, transportation, telecommunications, fair housing, voting accessibility, air carrier access and equal education, but there is nothing, not one paragraph, on a disabled person´s right to have a baby and parent that baby in peace without infringement of her personal family life. It is as if the idea of a physically impaired person being a mom or dad is somehow unthinkable in our perfect society.
I enquired with the Supreme Court about how to go about adding a parenting rights section to the act, and was told to write to my member of parliament.
I did so, twice. Her response?
She didn´t write back. I did however, get a Christmas card.
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