ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I shall examine the dynamics of families constituting deaf parents and their deaf children as deaf families. Although the term deaf is often mistakenly used to refer to all individuals with hearing difficulties, it usually refers to an individual with very little or no functional hearing and who often uses sign language to communicate. Families with deaf persons exist in a significant number in all countries of the world, yet documentation of this population is extremely limited. As a result of lack of substantive data at local and national level in the Indian context, such families remain highly invisible. In this chapter, an attempt is made to explore the experiences of families consisting of two generations of deaf persons i.e. deaf children, and their deaf parents to understand their experiences as shaped by their impairment (loss of part of body part and disability(social barrier) and the issues faced by them.
