The process of family coping with the birth of a child with severe disabilities.

The subject of this work is how a family copes with a childbirth in case the child is handicapped. In the theoretical part I focus on the family, on its functions, roles, its relationships and on its functions as a system. Furthermore I write about etiology, handicap classification and about family and handicapped child. The object of this work is to find out which factors influence the process of conciliation with the fact that a handicapped child was born (parent's age and education, attitude of other family members, attitude of medical staff and the way of telling information to parents) and to verify whether parents get enough information about their child's condition, whether they understand it and whether acceptation of handicapped child by family means new dimension of their life. In practical part I use qualitative research to find aims in five different families. Data collection was realized via half-structured interview and narative research with parents, in one case with a sibling and in another case even in presence of the handicapped person. Results of the research point out that neither age nor education are important and influencing factor, the attitude of family members is partially important, however the attitude of medical staff and the way of telling information is a very important factor. Understanding of information about child's condition and its sufficiency turned out to be individual. Nevertheless all families agreed that they see the handicap as a new dimension of life