This ethnographic study explores the relationships between deaf and hard-of-hearing children and their families. While the family is often assumed to be a sphere of intimacy, familiarity, and shared understanding, research has revealed complex intimate practices in contemporary Japanese families (e.g. Alexy, Cook 2019).

The birth of a child with a ‘disability’ may introduce unexpected difference while complicating a taken-for-granted, inherited identity. In the case of a deaf or hard-of-hearing child, parents are faced with making critical decisions regarding language and education.

Most parents today decide to raise their child using the oral communication method (kōwa hō). Non-verbal communication methods, such as ‘skinship’, may facilitate early childhood bonding but cannot overcome obstacles to intimacy that appear in late childhood and adolescence due to (oral) communication barriers.

Despite sharing the same ethnic and social background as their family members, many deaf and hard-of-hearing participants describe experiencing ‘otherness’ and ‘difference’ at home. On the other hand, in families where strategic measures are taken to bridge physical and emotional gaps, participants report a sense of belonging.

This paper discusses how parents, siblings, and deaf and hard-of- hearing youth negotiate relationships among ‘dis/abled’ family members while attempting to create and maintain familial intimacies across difference.