ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the actual uses which parents make of legitimations in their statements about differences between their experiences and that of normal parents and shows that the legitimations expressed by the agencies together constitute an ideology. It attempts to show that as parents' normal appearance is informed by appeals to the ideology in general, so differences in their appearance or identification by others may be related to the invocations of different combinations of some of the elements. The appearance of 'stoic acceptance' is typically grounded in appeals to most if not all the elements of ideology. Acceptance is more a prerequisite to subsequent routinization and adjustment; it is implicit in the evidence of the child's continual care rather than actively displayed. The demonstration of acceptance is essential to a normal appearance since there are no immediate problems with which parents can claim to be actively engaged once they can offer assurance of their competence in the child's everyday management.
