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Negotiating mothering against the odds: gastrostomy tube feeding, stigma, governmentality and disabled children
- Authors:
- CRAIG Gillian M., SCAMBLER Graham
- Journal article citation:
- Social Science and Medicine, 62(5), March 2006, pp.1115-1125.
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
Using the findings of a small-scale qualitative investigation based on in-depth interviews with mothers attending a tertiary paediatric referral centre in London, this paper explores professional and parental discourses in relation to gastrostomy tube feeding and disabled children. Detailed accounts are given of women's struggles to negotiate their identities, and those of their children, within dominant discourses of mothering and child-centredness. Constructions of feeding practices as coercive conflict with normative expectations of ‘good mothering’ and the ‘idealised autonomous’ child. Although notions of ‘stigmatised identities’ featured in women's accounts of feeding children, both orally and by tube, stigma fails to explain why mothers are rendered culpable within expert discourses. Prevailing theories of stigma and coping are interrogated and judged to be more descriptive than explanatory. Felt stigma is posited as an aspect of governmentality.
'Busy behaviour' in the 'Land of the Golden M': going out with learning disabled children in public places
- Author:
- RYAN Sara
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 18(1), March 2005, pp.65-74.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Research suggests that the inclusion of learning disabled people is contingent, unsatisfactory and incomplete. This paper will take a step back and look at the experiences of mothers of learning disabled children in public places. Seventeen women have taken part in the small scale qualitative study which used a combination of single and group interviews to explore their experiences in public places. Four areas have been identified as having an impact upon the experiences of the mothers and children in public places: the effects of the childrens' learning impairments, structural constraints, the attitudes of others and the attitudes of the mothers. The paper will conclude by asking if there is a role for alternative primary communities for learning disabled people and make suggestions for the development of a more 'learning disabled child-friendly' environment.
'Doing motherhood': some experiences of mothers with physical disabilities
- Authors:
- GRUE Lars, LAERUM Kirstin Tafjord
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 17(6), October 2002, pp.671-683.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article discusses the experiences of physically disabled mothers. The authors 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. The 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.