ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is on the daily lives of school-aged children whose younger brothers and sisters have mental retardation. In particular we aim to identify the persons, such as nuclear family members, relatives, peers, or professionals, with whom these children come into contact. We are interested in how the presence of a handicapped sibling in the family affects the social networks of children and their mothers and, in turn, whether these altered network contacts have an impact on children’s well-being. To begin with, we review previous literature that details the ways a disabled child potentially may affect the family as a whole, and then describe how these alterations in family life may modify family members’ social networks. Following this discussion we describe our research, in which we compare the daily activities, family relationships, and personal well-being of school-aged children from families with and without a mentally retarded child.
