This paper reviews the ways that scholarly and policy discourse about families of children with disabilities has changed over the last several decades in the United States and Canada. The first part of the paper explores the ways in which the emergence of Disability Studies in North American research has influenced those changes: what counts as evidence?; whose voices have been silenced?; how can a different understanding of disability reshape the rhetoric about family/professional interactions? The second part of the paper looks at specific examples of family research and how it illustrates the changes in discourse that have occurred and traces how professional undertanding of family perspectives has evolved over time. Finally the paper interprets the increased access to family narratives (published memoirs, blogs, social media) in the light of this shifting appreciation for authentic and contextualized understanding of families and how these personal accounts have changed as research has changed and the policy environment has aided such changes.