Disability and parenting: Lived experiences of parents having married disabled daughters in Kashmir.

Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Approach, this study explores the lived experiences of thirteen parents having married daughters with disabilities. By doing so, we are focusing on the life experiences of these parents, who were able to share the complete experiences from the birth of their child with disability to her marriage and also the post-marriage experiences. Multiple semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with the participants. Two major themes and five constituent sub-themes emerged after analyzing the data. The analysis of these themes reveals that upbringing a girl child with disability is a different and difficult experience for these parents. The birth of a girl child with disability or a girl child acquiring a disability is seen as a problem keeping in view the future of the child. The parents can go to greater length to get a son with disability treated, but the efforts that they put to get their daughter with disability treated are exceptionally higher. We also report how oppression has been internalized by them as they willingly marry off their daughters by doing compromise. Although there is ample research on the experiences of parenting a child with disability, but the experiences of parents having disabled daughters who are adults and are married are not documented, particularly in the context of Kashmir. Towards this end this study can provide an impetus for an important yet unexplored area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]