Background

The risk of acquiring impairments of various kinds increases as we grow older. Such old age-related impairments are not the ones at issue in this book, however. Instead, the focus is on people who have acquired impairments or chronic illness earlier in life, perhaps during childhood, adolescence or young adulthood, and who have had better chances than those in previous generations to live long lives. The aim of the book is to discuss – from a lifecourse perspective – what it means to live a long life, to age and to become old for people who have disabilities acquired early in life. The key questions are:

• • What does it mean to live a long life and to age with a physical or mental disability?

• • How have the lives of disabled people been affected by an era marked by disability reforms and identity politics?

• • What does it mean to be an ageing parent and continue to care for an adult disabled child?

• • How are we to understand ‘couplehood’ in the case when both parties are disabled?

These are questions that have been studied only to a limited extent in disability research as well as in ageing research to date, but are explored in the following chapters.

In general, we know relatively little about disabled people's lives over time and the meaning of living with a disability for many years, to grow old and to be old. One explanation for this may be that the possibility of a long life and of growing old with disabilities is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only since the Second World War that we have had identifiable generations of disabled people who have lived through different ages and reached an advanced age (Strauss and Shavelle, 1998; Mattsson and Glad, 2005; Nilsson et al, 2005), and when/where the lifecourse concept may appear to be relevant. Zarb (1993), who studied the living conditions of people who lived a long time with disabilities, noted that even if there are similarities between this group and other non-disabled groups of the same age, the group also has its own particular experiences shaped by life with disability.