THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
المؤلف:
APRIL HAMMOND
المصدر:
Caring for People with Learning Disabilities
الجزء والصفحة:
P161-C10
2025-10-28
59
THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Historically, in England, there were two main themes underpinning society’s attitude towards people with learning disabilities: one in which they were seen as innocent and in need of protection; and one in which they were seen as ignorant, irresponsible and promiscuous and, without proper control, could be a danger to society.
The idea that adults with learning disabilities were child-like and naive and described as ‘innocents’, with the inability to develop their mental capacities beyond those of children, dates back to early English history, as illustrated in this seventeenth-century legal definition:
‘He has no manner of understanding or reason nor government of himself, what is for his profit or not for his profit.’
(Potts & Fido 1991)
This patronizing view continued to be upheld until the mid-twentieth century and became more formally acknowledged in 1946, when a group of parents set up the National Association of Parents of Backward Children. This organization, which would later become Mencap, promoted a child-like and vulnerable image of people with learning disabilities, who needed help, care and protection. Advocating their sons’ and daughters’ immature status also provided these parents with a justifiable reason for protecting their ‘children’ from being vilified as ‘mental defectives’ and being incarcerated in institutions. Unfortunately, during the early twentieth century, the other popularly held attitude about people with learning disabilities was that they needed to be controlled and segregated from society:
‘. . . for instigating and spreading alcoholism, prostitution and criminal activities.’
(Potts & Fido 1991)
This belief was upheld more by propaganda, promoted by influential activists, than by actual criminal evidence but it still led to many individuals’ being unfairly and unjustifiably incarcerated in institutions, specifically built for adults with learning disabilities.
These activists often held influential and respected positions in politics and medicine, which enabled them to promote their views, with very little opposition, debate or calls for evidence to justify such beliefs. One belief was based on the then popular eugenic ideology that focused on breeding a superior human race, which later became more notoriously associated with the atrocities carried out by the Nazis in the Second World War (Lyn 2001). Such beliefs encouraged the segregation of men and women in institutions and can be brought to life in the prejudiced words of the activist Mary Dendy (early twentieth century): ‘. . . so as to prevent, transmitting their mental and social ineptitude to their offspring . . . the evil can be cured by preventing it’ (cited in Wright & Digby 1996).
Women with mild to moderate learning disabilities in particular were targeted and referred to as ‘moral defectives’, especially if they were known or thought to be sexually active. Many of these women were placed in institutions for the duration of their child-bearing years and, in some cases, the children of these women were also incarcerated (Brigham et al. 2000). This was compounded by the belief that these children might inherit the ‘learning disability’ from their mothers and, in many cases, evidence was sought to substantiate this belief via the family history (Wright & Digby 1996).
History, therefore, has given adults with learning disabilities a discriminatory and questionable status in society: either they were perceived as childlike and in need of protection, or they were deemed as ‘evil’ and society needed to be protected from them. Neither of these characteristics could be considered conducive to parenthood. Erroneously, discrimination against adults with learning disabilities via such prejudiced views is still being sustained in society today (Thompson 2001). Even though the institutions have nearly all been closed and tremendous efforts have been made to promote the rights and equality of adults with learning disabilities, especially in the last decade, there is still sustainable evidence of discrimination towards adults with learning disabilities. This is shown in studies such as ‘Health for All?’ (Band 1998) – a Mencap report that revealed that people with learning disabilities were more prone to discrimination from the healthcare services than were the general population – and by reviewing child protection cases of children whose parents had learning disabilities (Booth et al. 2005).
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