Families of Children with Down Syndrome in Turkey: A Sociocultural Approach

Abstract

Studies on children with Down syndrome have been on the rise in recent years because interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches have been developed to understand both parents and children with Down syndrome. This study aimed to analyze the views of Turkish parents of children with Down syndrome from a critical sociocultural perspective. Five families of children with Down syndrome were interviewed. These families discussed their views composed of medical and familial discourses, legal rights, bureaucracy, sociality, socialization, outsiders’ perspectives, criticism to educational and medical system and resistance through social dialogue. The qualitative results of the study show that the families developed a different discourse that resisted the conventional discourses created by medical institutions and macro social structures. In addition, negative and pessimistic perspectives of others were, to a large extent, eliminated and transformed into more positive and optimistic viewpoints through social dialogue and constructive narratives.