ABSTRACT
The main factors that can influence the opportunity of persons with disabilities to exercise Active Citizenship include physical and environmental characteristics, social norms, and institutional and domestic settings. Among these factors, the role of the family is still a relatively underexplored issue. This chapter investigates the role played by the family context in supporting or hampering the full participation of persons with disabilities in society through the analysis of life-course interviews. The social framework of the family is often co-responsible for the potential stigmatisation of the child with disabilities. The salience of the family in influencing the life courses of children with disabilities is not constant across cohorts and countries. The complexity of the family as a system and the complexity of the relations and interactions between the family and the person with disabilities do not permit a reliance on the family as an automatic transmission belt for policies.
