Families and Households: Impact of Members with a Disability

Call for Papers
RESEARCH IN SOCIAL SCIENCE AND DISABILITY: Volume 8


While there is an extensive literature on caregiving for disabled family members (particularly elderly or children), there is less information about the impact of disabled member/s on other aspects of family or household life. For example, what is the impact on children of having a disabled parent?  The return of so many wounded soldiers from our continuing military actions is almost certainly influencing family dynamics, income, stability and other factors affecting relatively young children.  

Furthermore, what is the impact on the family or household of having more than one disabled member?  How are family functioning, financial stability, health care access and participation in the community impacted?  And will families or households with more than one disabled member increase as the large baby boomer population ages?   

There are many data sets that allow for the examination of families or households (which may contain multiple families).  Additionally, families and households may be distinguished by types based on relationships (e.g., marital status), numbers of generations, size, etc. 
We solicit papers that quantitatively address issues pertaining to the study of disability at the family or household level.  Authors must explain the definition and measurement of disability clearly since measures available across data sets can be quite different.  
They should also be clear about how they identified family members, in particular children versus adults. 
  
Some examples of possible topics include:

1.	Comparisons of families (or households) with and without disabled family members on any number of family-level characteristics such as income, poverty status, access to health care, type of education, type of employment, family size, geographic distribution, etc.

2.	Comparisons of families with a disabled adult to families with a disabled child on the same kind of family-level variables as well as family-level indicators of employment status, race/ethnicity, and marital status.

3.	Examination of families with multiple members with a disability.  Again, considering family-level variables, how do families with multiple disabled members differ compared to families with one disabled member?  Does it matter if the multiple members are children, or adults, or a mixture of both?

4.	In two-person opposite sex families, does it matter if the disabled person is male or female?  What are the implications for income, financial stability, employment status, or other couple-level characteristics?  Does it matter if they are married or cohabiting?  

5.	How should households consisting of persons living alone be treated in family-level analyses of disability?  How many persons living alone are disabled, and will these numbers increase as the baby boomers age?  

Please note: This volume series has an interdisciplinary focus on social science research. As a result, it is very important that authors avoid the jargon of their discipline and write to an audience that is knowledgeable about disability issues but may not be as familiar with discipline-specific terminology.  

How to Submit:

Submissions are due no later than December 31, 2012 and should be sent to BOTH Barbara Altman  [log in to unmask] and Sharon Barnartt, [log in to unmask] , co-editors of the series. If you have questions about this call for papers, please contact Barbara – [log in to unmask]