NCD undertook this groundbreaking study to advance understanding and promote the rights of parents with disabilities and their children. This report provides a comprehensive review of the barriers and facilitators people with diverse disabilities—including intellectual and developmental disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, sensory disabilities, and physical disabilities—experience when they are exercising their fundamental right to create and maintain families. The report also describes the persistent, systemic, and pervasive discrimination against parents with disabilities. It analyzes how U.S. disability law and policy apply to parents with disabilities within the child welfare and family law systems, and the disparate treatment of parents with disabilities and their children. Examination of the impediments prospective parents with disabilities encounter when adopting or accessing assisted reproductive technologies provides further examples of the need for comprehensive protection of these rights.
Report: Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children
Author: National Council on Disability
Publication Date: 2012