Everyday life when growing up with a mother with an intellectual or developmental disability: Four retrospective life-stories

The Right to Sexuality, Reproductive Health, and Found a Family for People with Intellectual Disability: A Systematic Review

Although sexuality, reproductive health, and starting a family are human rights that should be guaranteed for all citizens, they are still taboo issues for people with intellectual disability (ID), and even more so for women with ID. This paper systematically reviews the current qualitative and quantitative evidence on the rights of people with ID in regard to Articles 23 (right to home and family) and 25 (health, specifically sexual and reproductive health) of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). A systematic review of the current literature, following PRISMA 2020, was carried out in ERIC, PsychInfo, Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest, and Web of Science. In all, 151 articles were included for review. The studies were categorized into six themes: attitudes, intimate relationships, sexual and reproductive health, sexuality and sex education, pregnancy, and parenthood. There are still many barriers that prevent people with ID from fully exercising their right to sexuality, reproductive health, and parenthood, most notably communicative and attitudinal barriers. These findings underline the need to continue advancing the rights of people with ID, relying on Schalock and Verdurgo's eight-dimensional quality of life model as the ideal conceptual framework for translating such abstract concepts into practice and policy.

The parenting occupations and purposes conceptual framework: A scoping review of 'doing' parenting

INTRODUCTION

Parenting is a valued, common and challenging adult role. Many parents, including some living with disability or difficult social circumstances, experience barriers to fulfilling their parenting roles. Yet, occupational therapy involvement in parenting is rarely documented. Current understandings about 'doing' parenting lack cohesion and are dispersed in occupational therapy literature. This study aims to map and synthesise occupational therapy literature on 'doing' parenting to describe the state of the existing knowledge base, and develop a conceptual framework of parenting occupations as portrayed in occupational therapy literature.

METHODS

A scoping review was conducted. Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched on 28 October 2019 and updated on 18 February 2021. Journal articles and book chapters were screened for eligibility. Included texts' publication characteristics, methodological characteristics, and areas of focus were summarised. Interpretive content analysis was conducted.

RESULTS

From 5945 unique records, 105 texts were included. These discussed general parenting, parents with disabilities, and parenting in challenging social situations. Most texts focussed on mothers caring for young children in Western cultural contexts. The analysis culminated in the development of a conceptual framework: the Parenting Occupations and Purposes (POP) Framework. This comprises 10 interrelated areas of parenting occupations, which are performed for the purposes of addressing the child's basic, developmental and social needs. Parenting occupations were also found to be influenced by additional, underlying occupations that build parenting capacity - Continuous Parental Development (CPD) occupations.

CONCLUSION

These findings provide an overview of current occupational therapy conceptualisations of parenting. Unlike most of the existing literature on parenting, the POP Framework is parent-centric rather than child-centric. More research on parenting occupations is needed, especially with more diverse representation (fathers, ages of children, parental disability and sociocultural background). Further research is required to examine the POP Framework's usefulness in guiding research and practice, particularly among parents with diverse characteristics.