Search

This paper is about mothering, young learning disabled people, their sexualised and relationship lives and normalisation--not through the lens of the disabled person, but via a mothers perspective and theoretical discussion. As a mother who has a learning disabled daughter, a feminist and an academic my own mothering experience, my Ph.D. research and social theory are woven throughout this paper with the intention of opening up debate about sex, intimacy and normalisation, and how these impact upon young learning disabled people. I suggest that the relationship between sex, reproduction, intimacy and intellectual impairment and a project to decipher what it means to be human in all its dirty glory are also part of the discourse that needs to be discussed experientially and theoretically. So much so that the messy world within which we all live can be variously and differently constructed.

In order for the sociological study of disability to enable, then it must be ready to conceptualize complex terrains of knowledge and activism. Research has to work alongside disabled people, their allies, their practices, their resistances and their theorizing. This paper makes a case for a framework of understanding that situates such work. Disability studies tends to understand its concepts (e.g. disability, exclusion, inclusion, impairment, politicization, people) as entities rooted in arborescent and hierarchical forms of knowledge. These modernist misconceptions can be challenged through understanding knowledge, practice, living and activism as rhizomatic, captured as lines of flight which are always becoming. As a new reader of Deleuze and Guattari, I make a case for disability research understanding parents and their disabled children as deconstructing or (re)deterritorializing the areas of policy, politics, practice, theory and activism. Creating burrows for shelter and eventual breakout, becoming 'angel makers', drawing on narratives of parents of disabled babies, this paper maps out a vision of parents not blocked by the strata of disabling society, but enabled by lines of flight, resistance, flux and change. This paper aims to be Deleuzoguattarian but only in ways that fit the complexities of parents' accounts.

Women with children have been depicted as struggling to justify themselves in the shadow of intensive mothering ideology. However, little is said about women who have a disability such as dyslexia, and how disability may intersect with intensive mothering ideology to present additional challenges. In this paper, life-story interviews are drawn upon to start to unpack the ways in which mothering and dyslexia may intersect. The themes discussed include: fear and perceived challenges of having a child with dyslexia; how mothers perceived their impairments manifest in their mothering, including poor organisational skills, short-term memory, reading and spelling; and how mothers may attempt to reframe the apparent contradiction between a "good" mother and a mother with dyslexia by, for example, portraying themselves as a positive role-model for their child and better able to identify and cater for their child's needs. (Contains 1 table and 2 notes.)

Parents of children with autism have played a prominent role in controversies surrounding this condition. Parental voices were critical in challenging the "refrigerator mother" theory and more recently have attracted public attention for claims that autism may be caused by childhood vaccinations and that "unorthodox biomedical" treatments may enable some children to "recover" from autism. Over the past decade, some parents have rejected this approach, making common cause with people with conditions on the autistic spectrum who repudiate the quest for treatments and "cures". Through a study of parental accounts, this paper examines how parental voices have contributed to the evolving official discourse around autism as well as to public awareness of the condition.

This paper examines the development of fieldwork methodology in a study that investigated the parenting experiences and parent support needs of a group of parents with an intellectual disability. It considers the ways in which the original planning for the project changed as the fieldwork unfolded, requiring adaptations to our methodological expectations and in the process deepening our understanding of the phenomena we were studying and reinforcing for us the importance of relationships in fieldwork-based research. Three themes in particular are considered that became central to this research: research relationships; safety for participants/positioning of the researcher; suspending assumptions about impairment and disability and influences on life experiences.

This paper examines the proposal that by exploring at a micro level the control exercised over children it is possible to identify the wider societal mechanisms for maintaining power at a macro level. The focus of the paper is on the provision of respite care for disabled children in settings away from home. Drawing on principles within childhood sociology and referencing recent research within disability studies consideration is given to issues of ‘power and control’ in relation to disabled children and how that reflects the structure of adult society. The paper concludes with a discussion of the concept of citizenship as a model for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the role played in educational terms by special schools is being mirrored in welfare by voluntary organisations who provide separate services for disabled children. The impact of the Contract Culture is reinforcing this trend so that the imperative in the Children Act 1989 to integrate is being undermined by the growing role of Voluntary organisations as providers, rather than innovators or advocates. The paper draws on previously published research into the changes in social workers roles in relation to child protection, since the Children Act and a previously unpublished case study in a voluntary sector Project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects critically on the meaning of play, especially as it relates to disabled children and their experiences. We explore the close alliance of play to cognitive and social development, particularly in the case of psychologies of development, and reveal a dominant discourse of the disabled child as a nonplaying object that requires professional therapeutic intervention. We argue that this pathologisation of play on the part of disabled children is closely tied to normalisation of childhood, in which non-normal bodies are increasingly expected to be governed and corrected not only by professionals but also by parents/carers. In order to rescue more enabling visions of the disabled child and their play we turn to three perspectives - the new sociology of childhood; social oppression theories of disability; critical developmental psychology. These resources, we suggest, allow us to reconfigure what we mean by play and disability in a contemporary climate that celebrates competition and marketisation over the intrinsic potentialities of all children. We argue that how we conceive play will per se undermine or promote forms of inclusive research, policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on cystic fibrosis (CF) tends to view CF as a long-term medical condition of childhood, thus reinforcing the mistaken view that few children with CF survive into adulthood. Despite the fact that people with CF are increasingly living into older age there has been little research into the employment of adults with CF. Those studies which have been undertaken portray CF as a 'serious illness' which causes employment problems. In contrast, this paper discusses findings from a study which explored the employment experiences of adults with CF from a social model perspective. The findings reveal barriers to employment which are similar to those experienced by other disabled people, as well as barriers related to the 'impairment effects' of CF. The authors conclude that adults with CF have valuable perspectives to contribute to social model analysis and the development of employment-related policy solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]