Abstract:

The ultimate goal of this research is how parents of mentally disabled children think and construct disability in the context of exclusion, stigma, discrimination, and equality. In terms of the originality of the research, determining whether parents of mentally disabled children accept stigmatizing, exclusionary and discriminatory tendencies towards disabled people, both in terms of the language used and their behavior, and reproduce this situation in their daily lives, constitutes an important gap that needs to be filled. With this aim, this research consisted of face-to-face in-depth interviews conducted within the semi-structured interview form with a total of 40 parents of mentally disabled children, 1 male and 39 females, in the Kemalpaşa district of Izmir. Research findings show that; Parents (especially mothers) of mentally disabled children take care of everything about the mentally disabled child, endure great sacrifices for this, cannot spare time for their own career, social and cultural development, and experience the same problems of exclusion and stigma that children are exposed to. On the other hand, in terms of their perspective on disabled people, it has been determined that almost all of the parents internalize and reproduce the medically based dominant definition of disability and use an exclusionary and stigmatizing language when defining disability. In addition, parents who are exposed to various stigmatization, exclusion and discrimination by society cannot escape the effects of gendered and racialized stigmatizing and exclusionary language, especially regarding disability.

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