The paper describes the conflict between parental responsibility for a handicapped child, particularly a retarded child, and the parents' other interests and concerns. Swedish parents (N=60) of retarded children were interviewed once and three families were interviewed several times over a 6-month period. Parents typically went through a period of…

Historically, the spread of universal formal mass education in the West is closely linked to emergence of nation-states. This is also true of the Third World. The salient feature of education today is that it reflects a model of society in which citizens, including children, are seen as a potential to be tapped for development of the nation, as…