“Why Can’t I Live at Home, I Wouldn’t be a Problem”: An Intellectually Disabled Adult’s Autobiography

• In Event: 1421 - Disability and Family

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze an intellectually disabled adult’s autobiography and to give her voice about her life, problems and desires. Our daughter, 50, has lived at a residential school and then group homes from the age of 17, but has never been able to accept living there. Her desire is to live at home with us and she cannot understand the reasons this is not possible. She is writing her autobiography, which is now up to 665 pages. In addition to providing the voice of a intellectually disabled adult, the paper will give our perspectives as her mother and stepfather and, most importantly, use her autobiography and ours as a way to analyze the debates between advocates of the medical model of special education, who argue that intellectual disabilities are neuropsychological and advocates of disability studies, who argue that disabilities are socially constructed, and radical disability studies theorists, who sometimes argue that if the labels are removed, the disabilities may disappear. We argue that her disability is real and primarily neurological (IQ 69) and although the reactions to her disability by others may be socially constructed, her disability is real and will not go away if the label goes away. However, her story provides clear evidence that her identity has developed in relations to the labeling by her parents, schools, psychologists, and her group home, and how she has resisted many of these labels and constructed an identity that resists the social control of her group home.

Authors

• Alan R. Sadovnik, Rutgers University

• Susan Semel, City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center

• Nikki Solyom, The Collegiate School