Introduction

The origins of this book lie in a critique that we, and others, had made of the conceptual construction of some disabled parents’ children as ‘young carers’. (The historical background and key arguments of this critique were discussed in Chapter One of this book.) It is natural, then, that we would want to look in detail here at the extent of children's involvement in domestic and ‘caring’ work, as well as the context in which it takes place.

We keenly avoid labelling family members as ‘carers’ or assuming that disabled parents do not themselves occupy ‘carer’ roles within the family. Our aim is to explore the different factors that might influence not only the degree to which children are involved in domestic and caring responsibilities, but also the nature of any involvement. This has necessarily included a concern with the ways in which formal and informal support mechanisms operate to encourage and/or limit the involvement of children in ‘caring’ roles. (This follows directly from the arguments we made in Chapter Three concerning the difficulties disabled parents can face in accessing support.) It has also included a concern with the influence of a broad set of possible factors on children's involvement, including family shape as well as the age and gender of children. In the second half of this chapter qualitative data is used from our Stage One families to discuss the factors influencing children's involvement in caring and other work, within these four closely related theme clusters:

• • parental dilemmas and strategies;

• • formal support and ‘young caring’;

• • informal support and ‘young caring’;

• • children as social actors.

In the first half of the chapter, however, we look at what the quantitative data can tell us about the identification of children as ‘young carers’, their involvement in caring and domestic activities, and their relationship to variables such as gender, age, family shape and impairment group.

Identifying ‘young carers’

Our research sample of parents was opportunistic, and cannot be said to be representative of the general population of disabled parents in the UK. In any case, knowledge of the size and characteristics of this broader group is extremely limited. We do not claim, therefore, that the quantitative data presented here paint a picture that is more widely applicable to disabled parents elsewhere.