ABSTRACT
There is evidence from other reports and studies that no specific kind of handicap brings unique problems to the family. Far more difficulties are shared by all families with a handicapped child than are specific to the medical category of the handicap. Cerebral palsy, for example, appears to be distributed randomly throughout the population, so that a child with this condition is as likely as any normal child to be born into a family where relationships are not very stable. The concepts of acceptance and adjustment share the difficulties that surround those of guilt, over-protection and overdependence. They describe complex patterns of feeling, attitude and circumstance in terms so grossly over-simplified as to distort almost out of recognition the original response of the individual parent. Possibly as an immediate consequence of this simplification, such concepts all too easily lend themselves to woolly theorizing; conveniently amorphous, they can be shaped to fit anyone's favourite prejudice.
