Courtesy stigma revisited

Building upon Goffman's idea of a courtesy stigma (a stigma acquired as a result of being related to a person with a stigma), I examined how family members maintain community ties while coping with a child who clearly disvalues them. In the early 1970s, I reported that parents develop strategies to make an unmanageable problem manageable. In this paper the various responses to the courtesy stigma concept were examined with regard to the field of mental retardation in particular and disability in general. Also examined was how the social attribution of stigma serves to create distinctions, moral and otherwise, in our society.