This book focuses on the lived realities of disabled mothers to examine how they navigate their multiple competing responsibilities and identities. It reimagines normative constructions of motherhood, dependency, and care while rethinking advocacy and resistance, in the context of disability, gender, and mental health.
This book focuses on the lived realities of disabled mothers to examine how they navigate their multiple competing responsibilities and identities. It reimagines normative constructions of motherhood, dependency, and care while rethinking advocacy and resistance, in the context of disability, gender, and mental health. It essentially argues that disabled women negotiate a delicate balancing act: they constantly work at proving their competence, even as they push the boundaries of normative femininity.
The book is grounded in qualitative research with disabled mothers. In these conversations, disabled mothers described various aspects of their motherhood journey, ranging from their interactions with society to their daily experiences within the household. Drawing from Critical Disability Studies, Critical Psychology, care theory and feminist scholarship, this interdisciplinary volume provides minute details of everyday situations that disabled mothers encounter, and the strategies they engage in to provide care for their children.
This book will be relevant for students and scholars in disability studies, psychology, gender studies, development studies, medical anthropology and sociology, and medical humanities, among others. Further, the use of case studies makes it an essential read for practitioners and policymakers. Recognizing the political significance of plain language in disability studies, the books accessible language will appeal to academic, lay, and practitioner audiences
1. Locating the Research, Researcher, and the Field of Enquiry
2.
Motherhood and Ideal Mothering: Negotiations with Ableist Discourses
3. Care
experiences of Disabled Mothers: Rethinking the Question of Capacity
4.
Mothering and Care in the Context of Autism and Intellectual Disability:
Narratives of Interdependence
5. Responding to ableism and redefining
motherhood: A Balancing Act
6. Rethinking Disability, Advocacy, and the
Politics of Care Appendices
Priyasha Choudhary is a researcher exploring the intersections of disability, gender, sexuality, and care in India. She is a Research Assistant at the University of Amsterdam and previously worked as a Research Associate at IIT Hyderabad, contributing to projects on intellectual disability, gender, and long-term care. Trained in core social sciences, she draws on critical disability studies, medical anthropology, kinship, and feminist ethnography to examine how ableism and patriarchy shape care and kinship. With strong feminist underpinnings, her research is guided by critical and rights-based perspectives, centring lived experiences and feminist methodologies.
Shubha Ranganathan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. Her research projects engage with health, gender, and disability from interdisciplinary perspectives. She has studied local healing practices among marginalized groups as well as mental health and disability-related issues in India. Her work is framed by critical and social justice perspectives, focusing on lived experiences and the role of advocacy for social change. Currently, she is exploring questions about parenting and care in the context of autism as part of her engagement with the neurodiversity discourse.
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