ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at friendships and the use of leisure among the young people to discover to what extent the pattern of friendships and leisure activities is affected by the fact of handicap. The parents of the handicapped were asked whether they felt that their teenager had as good a social life as others of the same age and whether they had as many friends as non-handicapped teenagers. Many handicapped young people have little or no experience of the real facts of the social life led by the non-handicapped because they have so little contact with able-bodied peers. Despite the fact that most teenagers said they were interested in music and enjoyed listening to it, relatively few played a musical instrument, particularly the controls. It is interesting to note in relation to swimming outside school, however, that over 40 per cent of the handicapped never went, compared with only 10 per cent of the controls.
