Hearing parents learning sign language: a call for systemic changes

Around 90-95% of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children are born to hearing parents, most of whom have no prior knowledge of a sign language. This creates a risk of language deprivation, with long-term effects on language, cognitive, and social-emotional development. Research shows that sign language input supports children's development without hindering spoken language acquisition. Yet many hearing parents of DHH children are discouraged from learning sign language by unfounded claims from professionals or by restrictive support systems. In the Netherlands, parental sign language courses are covered by health insurance, which reduces financial barriers but also reinforces a medical framing of deafness and sign language and limits parental choice by assigning families to a single provider. Higher-level sign language courses are scarce, and most materials focus on vocabulary rather than sentence formation, leaving parents at a basic level while their children progress rapidly. This brief highlights what is known about hearing parents' experiences learning sign language and calls for systemic changes: unbiased professional guidance, inclusion of DHH role models, greater parental choice in courses, and a socio-cultural view on sign language.