Gendered ironies in home care: surveillance, gender struggles and infantilisation (original) (raw)
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The maternal is political : Exploring mothering among women with disability
2011
In this paper disabled women’s mothering experiences in the Portuguese society are explored, drawing from in-depth interviews with 21 women with a variety of impairments, living in the metropolitan region of Lisbon. The women offer accounts of mothering which in many ways resonate with the findings reported in the mainstream literature on care, motherhood, and mothering. But disability is also a factor of difference in their lives that transforms and re-shapes their experiences and practices of mothering. Thus, both commonality and difference permeate their stories. Importantly too, women’s narratives highlight their self-determination in the face of stigmatizing discourses which historically have operated to exclude many like them from motherhood. Thus for these women, mothering is also a site of struggle and empowerment. For them the maternal is political.
Negotiating the Dependency/Nurturance Tightrope: Dilemmas of Motherhood and Disability
Canadian Review of Sociology-revue Canadienne De Sociologie, 2007
La féminité normative place les mères dans une situation difficile, entre la dépendance et la tendance à se dévouer; d'un côté, les bonnes mères devraient être dépendantes dans une relation avec un mäle pourvoyeur. Inversement, elles devraient fournir de bons soins par un maternage actif, habile ainsi que par leur engagement. Cette condition pose des défis aux femmes ayant une incapacité et dont la dépendance à l'égard d'un partenaire masculin peut entrainer de la vulnérabilite par rapport à l'abus, alors que de la dépendance envers l'Etat peut découler de la pauvreté et de la surveillance. L'auteure explore les dilemmes que les mères handicapées rencontrent pour concilier leur position de dépendance par rapport aux besoins de leurs enfants d'etre maternés. Compliquant les conceptions négatives de la dépendance, plusieurs femmes ont décrit comment certaines relations de dépendance leur ont apporté, a elles et à leurs enfants, des réseaux positifs de soutien.Normative femininity offers mothers a tightrope of nurturance and dependency. On the one hand, good mothers should be dependent through a relationship with a male provider. Conversely, they should provide nurturance through active, involved and expert mothering. This tightrope poses challenges to women with disabilities whose dependency on male partners can bring vulnerability to abuse, while dependency on the state can result in poverty and surveillance. This article explores the dilemmas disabled mothers face, reconciling their position of dependency against their children's need for nurturance. Complicating negative conceptions of dependency, many women described how some relations of dependency provided them and their children with positive networks of support.
PhD Thesis, 2017
The aim of this thesis is to present, explore, and interpret the experiences of women who mother children with disabilities. The experiences of motherhood and mothering children with disabilities are seldom rendered visible in social research, and have rarely informed developments in social theory, motherhood studies, the sociology of personal life, or theories of the self. This research sought to address these issues and foreground the experiences of an under-represented group, through in-depth qualitative interviews and personal community mapping with 18 women who mother children with disabilities residing in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The approach to the study brought together the perspectives of two generally discrete fields of sociological inquiry: Motherhood Studies and the sociology of personal life. The research found that women who are mothers of children with disabilities live within social, cultural, political, and economic contexts which assume they have the capacity to ‘freely choose’ how they live their lives and form their relationships, while also expecting them to remain indefinitely self-sacrificing, primary carers for their children with disabilities. Thus, these women’s lives are framed by competing and highly problematic sets of assumptions and expectations that cannot be solely understood in terms of individualisation theory, which assumes an individual’s agency and freedom of choice in authoring their lives (Beck, 1992/1994). The concept of ‘hegemonic maternality’, an adaptation of Raewyn Connell’s (1995) theory of ‘hegemonic masculinity,’ emerged from the research as a useful framework in understanding and theorising the normative social, cultural, and structural forces that produce and regulate women’s experiences as mothers. It suggests that persistent unrealistic assumptions and expectations around motherhood and mothering translate as obligation and constraint in these women’s lives. Women who are mothers of children with disabilities must navigate and negotiate complex, contradictory, and pervasive assumptions and expectations of how to mother their children, as they conduct their relationships and seek to define their sense of self. The consequences of such endeavours are far-reaching: they expose these women’s consistent struggles to both contest and conform to normative concepts of motherhood. The findings also point to the affordances of theories of relationality (Jallinoja & Widmer, 2011; Emirbayer, 1997) in more fully explaining the topography of their lives. By positioning these women’s lives and experiences in the context of concepts and debates around motherhood, personal relationships, as well as the formation of the self and subjectivities, this research offers a number of original contributions to the knowledge base of the sociology of motherhood, of personal life; and of the self, and contributes to theoretical developments relating to maternal experience in contemporary Australian society. First, this thesis argues for the interdependence of two fields of sociological inquiry in order to forge new understandings within and between both. Second, the study contributes to each field through the development of the conceptual framework of hegemonic maternality. Third, it challenges individualisation theory by demonstrating its inappropriateness for women who are mothers of children with disabilities. Fourth, this research provides substantial evidence that will potentially influence social policy, public attitudes, and future research and scholarship.
Analysis of motherhood constructions in feminist and disability studies
Revista Estudos Feministas, 2020
This theoretical essay analyzes proximities and distances between feminist and disability studies co ncerning care and motherhood constructions. It discusses the elaboration of a norm for human experiences; disability studies; feminist disability studies and the ethics of care; the social construction of a normative motherhood and its implications for women living with disabilities. Within feminist disability studies, women with disabilities or mothers of people with disabilities indicate that the patriarchal institution of motherhood challenges them differently, for they are not compelled, but discouraged from reproducing and providing care, being unfavorably positioned in the reproductive hierarchy. Based on their experiences, they reveal various possible motherhoods, beyond normative maternity.
Constructions of motherhood in feminist and disability studies
Artigo, 2020
This theoretical essay analyzes proximities and distances between feminist and disability studies co ncerning care and motherhood constructions. It discusses the elaboration of a norm for human experiences; disability studies; feminist disability studies and the ethics of care; the social construction of a normative motherhood and its implications for women living with disabilities. Within feminist disability studies, women with disabilities or mothers of people with disabilities indicate that the patriarchal institution of motherhood challenges them differently, for they are not compelled, but discouraged from reproducing and providing care, being unfavorably positioned in the reproductivehierarchy. Based on their experiences, they reveal various possible motherhoods, beyond normative maternity.
Mothers With Disabilities: In Their Own Voice
American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 2000
Objectives. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the personal experience of women with disabilities engaged in the occupation of mothering and their perceptions of their interpersonal environment, including interaction with family, professional caregivers, and the community. Method. In this qualitative study, in-depth interviews were conducted with a diverse sample (n = 8) of mothers with disabilities or chronic illnesses to uncover the nature of their mothering experience. Data were analyzed for themes with the constant comparison approach of grounded theory. Results. The quality of the participants’ experience varied with the degree of perceived similarity or dissimilarity with other mothers and acceptance of these differences. In addition, their perception of the supportive or nonsupportive nature of their interpersonal environment had an impact on their mothering experience. Conclusion. The results suggest that mothers with disabilities tend to value the imp...
Disability and Mothering: Embodied Knowledge
2019
The relationship between feminism and motherhood has not been without its complexities. These acquire additional layers when disability is introduced as a third aspect of this relationship. While feminists, from Adrienne Rich onwards, have critiqued the social construction of motherhood in a world that valorizes mothers without granting them any subjectivity, women with disabilities are rarely imagined as capable of care. This is an exploratory article on the disabled woman’s right to be a mother. It is based on secondary literature to suggest that rather than be seen as abject and incapable of mothering, women with disabilities may be thought of as potentially feminist in their maternal practice. As such, mothering with a disability interrogates the normative discourse of motherhood and care.
Doing Motherhood': Some experiences of mothers with physical disabilities
Disability & Society, 2002
In this paper, we discuss the experiences of physically disabled mothers. We interviewed 30 women in the age group 28-49 with medical diagnoses such as: multiple sclerosis, neuromuscular diseases, cerebral palsy and spinal cord injury Becoming a mother implied for many 'capturing' a gender or 'recapturing' a lost gender. They women felt they had to go to great lengths to 'present' themselves and their children as managing 'normally' in order to be accepted as 'ordinary' mothers. Eventually, they feared that their children might be taken away from them if they did not live up to other people's expectations. One possible explanation for what they experienced as other people's scepticism might be that disabled people on the whole are primarily still looked upon as being dependent on other people's help and care. In short, they are often looked upon by professionals and lay people as receivers, and not as carers.