Their Time Has Come: Youth with Disabilities on the Cusp of Adulthood

Notes

167 NOTES CHAPTER 1 A CRISIS SITUATION? 1. All participants’ names are pseudonyms. 2. For more on the life course perspective and how it is shaped by social context, see Elder, Modell, and Parke 1993. 3. Recently, scholars have focused on how the timing of attainment of markers of adulthood has shifted over the past few decades, possibly with greater variability in their sequencing and longer times to attainment of the full set of adult markers. For more on this topic, see Furstenberg et al. 2004; Goldsheider et al. 1999; Mortimer and Larson 2002; Shanahan 2000; and Shanahan and Hood 2000. CHAPTER 2 THE RULES HAVE CHANGED 1. See Schwartzenberg 2005 for parents’ stories about local school districts’ refusal to educate their children. 2. An electronic image of the original letter is available at http://americanhistory .si.edu/disabilityrights/exhibit_parents1_fu114.html. 3. Gerben Dejong (1979) also credits the consumerism, self-help, demedicalization , and deinstitutionalization movements as influencing the independent living movement. 4. See Hahn 1994 on the minority model of disability. Mayerson 1993 provides additional information on Americans with Disabilities Act activism. 5. Fleisher and James 2000, 92, quotes Dart’s speech, “The ADA: A Promise to Be Kept,” from a manuscript the authors received from Dart on May 28, 1997. 6. When Congress created the ADA, it defined a disabled person generally as an individual with “(A) a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual; (B) a record of such an impairment; or (C) being regarded as having such impairment.” Since its passage in 1990, there has been some backlash against the ADA in the courts, in part in an attempt to reduce the scope of individuals who qualify as disabled under the act. In response to these legal challenges to the ADA, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. NOTES 168 The amended act “reinstates a broad scope of protection under the ADA,” stating that “Congress finds that—(1) in enacting the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), Congress intended that the Act ‘provide a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities’ and provide broad coverage; (2) in enacting the ADA, Congress recognized that physical and mental disabilities in no way diminish a person’s right to fully participate in all aspects of society, but that people with physical or mental disabilities are frequently precluded from doing so because of prejudice, antiquated attitudes, or the failure to remove societal and institutional barriers; (3) while Congress expected that the definition of disability under the ADA would be interpreted consistently with how courts had applied the definition of a handicapped individual under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, that expectation has not been fulfilled.” The amended act goes on to specify Supreme Court decisions that narrowed the scope of the ADA. CHAPTER 3 PARTICIPATION AND VOICE 1. For the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education regulations regarding transition from special education that were effective at the time my fieldwork was conducted, see www.doe.mass.edu/sped/links/ transition.html. 2. Similarly, girls with learning disabilities in a recent study of participation in IEP meetings reported that they found the meetings difficult, with one describing them as “intimidating” and another saying that she felt “humiliated” (Trainor 2007, 39). A study of youths with intellectual disabilities conducted in the United Kingdom found that many students were excluded from discussion during planning meetings and that those with more severe disabilities were more likely to be excluded (Carnaby et al. 2003). CHAPTER 4 MAKING THEIR OWN MAPS 1. Pierre Bourdieu (1986) coined the term “social capital.” This chapter relies on James Coleman’s (1988) later description of social capital, which spells out additional dimensions of the concept, particularly for youth development. 2. Annette Lareau stressed “the importance of social structural location in shaping their everyday lives” in her investigation of inequality of childhood (2003, 236). Here, social structural location shapes the range of perceived opportunities. 3. Glen H. Elder Jr. has written extensively about how families are important social contexts for youth, particularly in the transition to adulthood, and about how family members’ lives are linked and interdependent (see also Elder 1978, 1995; Elder and Caspi 1990); on family roles more recently, see Arnett 2004; Furstenberg et al. 2004. Families can have important effects on the adaptive development of children; for the effects on young children, see...