Alternative Pathways to Employment: Family Supported Entrepreneurship for Neurodivergent Young Adults

Family-supported entrepreneurship is a pathway to alternative employment for neurodivergent young adults (NDYA) who often face barriers to opportunities of postsecondary vocational, higher education, and competitive integrated employment. Family assistance with entrepreneurship is a foundation for interdependence that NDYAs need to meet the developmental challenges in the construction of self-determination during their transition to adulthood. It is unclear, however, whether and to what extent the novel approach of employment and education through entrepreneurship embodies this process in the NDYA and how families assist in its access. This research represents an exploration of entrepreneurship through dyadic interviews of NDYA entrepreneurs and their family support member. These interviews sought to understand experiences with entrepreneurship to identify related activities and events influential to the development of self-determination in the context of family, community, and secondary transition institutional systems. This research employs a Critical Disability Studies lens to visualize interdependence framed by feminist care ethics and standpoint theory, and it discerns family supported entrepreneurship to be a viable means of employment capacious for platforming personal growth and the development of attributes anticipated in adulthood. As such, it offers alternative options for postsecondary employment and community engagement while expanding the definition of interdependence and the role of family in the life course of NDYAs. The non-economic outcomes of family supported entrepreneurship for the NDYA are of interest to postsecondary transition, employment, community integration, and family inclusive self-determination intervention programming; as well as informing a wider and more nuanced understanding of neurodivergent interdependence and socially productive identity.