Everyday humour: rethinking understandings of siblinghood and learning disability through a family sociology lens

Research exploring siblinghood and disability focuses primarily on non-disabled sibling outcomes, which cultivate pathologising and individualised understandings of disability as a deficit and burden. This article argues that family sociology offers an approach to understanding sibling relationships that can generate more affirmative scholarship around siblinghood and learning disability, using humour as a case study. Affirmative approaches are an important absence in existing research around disability and siblinghood. The article draws on narrative interviews with 14 siblings of people with learning disabilities based in the UK, which explored the role of humour in how they enact their sibling relationships. The analysis focuses on shared jokes and sibling teasing, with both centring the everyday ‘living alongside’ that constitutes many sibling relationships. The article provides two contributions to understanding learning disability through a family sociology lens. First, a family sociology approach offers a novel way to challenge deficit understandings of siblinghood and learning disability. Second, a focus on humour provides a window into nuanced and affirmative stories of everyday family life. In doing this, the article presents a nuanced and innovative way of thinking about siblinghood and learning disability that can be seen to centre the human and challenge deficit narratives.