Growing up

Key conclusions supported by the study:

• The relationship between parental competence and child outcomes is more complicated than most current thinking allows.

• Parental competence is resourced by the family's social network.

• Nearly all the now-adult children in the study had maintained a valued relationship with their families.

• There was no suggestion of them wanting to make a clean break from their past in order to establish an identity free from the stigma of having a parent with learning difficulties.

• The idea that children may be robbed of their youth by having to assume the responsibility for 'parenting their parent' is widely overstated.

• It is the mostly commonplace quality of people's lives as adults that is remarkable in the context of their upbringing.

• Children's destinies are not fixed by having a mother or father with learning difficulties.

Growing up with parents who have learning difficulties, Routledge, London, 1998.