Families instill and expose children to their beliefs and values, with parents significantly influencing their children's perception of disability by communicating and sharing their thoughts on the matter. Parental influences include political views, parenting and attachment styles, and certain attitudes that are likely to be passed on to their children.

Parental Influences Affecting Disability Perception

Education, one of the primary modes through which children develop their understanding of the world and others, is an essential tool through which people are able to learn about disability early on during a critical period of development and learning. Educational influences highlight how the availability of disability education, in addition to the attitudes of teachers and peers, shapes a youth’s outlook. By affecting children’s perceptions, the educational environment also affects parents, as parent-child interactions lead to the mutual influencing of their personalities and attitudes.

Educational Influences Affecting Disability Perception

Cultural norms and traditions form the basis through which individuals, groups, and whole communities perceive disability. Cultural norms and traditions underlie parental and educational practices, including depictions of disability in the media, spiritual and religious beliefs, a region’s bias towards a particular parenting style, and many more. 

Cultural Norms and Traditions Affecting Disability Perception

Improving disability perception, particularly in children and adolescents, involves targeting youth and parental education. With an emphasis on the latter, parents should be taught about their effects on the developing beliefs of their children and be encouraged to instill values that will lead their children to become socially intelligent individuals that respond positively toward people with disabilities.

Interventions Improving Disability Perception

Several internal and external factors develop an individual's perception of disability, many of which influence another and vice versa:

- Personal Attitude and Personality
- Parental Influences
- Educational Influences
- Cultural Norms and Traditions

University of Notre Dame


Individuals who view disability solely in terms of the social model may unintentionally neglect the subjective, emotional and spiritual disability experience. This could potentially lead to distortions associated with the holistic development of a disability identity.   


Disability Identity Development in terms of the Social Model 


Babik, I., & Gardner, E. S. (2020). Factors Affecting the Perception of Disability: A Developmental Perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.702166

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