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Using queer/crip theory as a frame, I examine the narratives of 17 mothers raising children with disabilities.
Abstract
Purpose/Methods/Approach
Using queer/crip theory as a frame, I examine the narratives of 17 mothers raising children with disabilities.
Findings
Results show that the mothers’ narratives of an imagined future for their children often involve the idea of success in terms of production and reproduction. However, some mothers do question this idea of normalcy, challenge deeply seated ideas about neoliberal inclusion, and reframe disability as a different way of existing as opposed to a deficient way of being.
Implications/Value
The focus of this paper is on how mothers imagine different kinds of social arrangements. Some mothers, instead of embracing success as narrowly defined under neoliberalism, challenge the idea and instead offer queer narratives of parenting. This study illustrates how counternarratives can be constructed to resist prevailing narratives of disability as deficiency.
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The legalization of same-sex marriage changed the parenting landscape for LGBTQ parents in a variety of ways. Parenthood is presumably different now that same-sex marriage is…
Abstract
The legalization of same-sex marriage changed the parenting landscape for LGBTQ parents in a variety of ways. Parenthood is presumably different now that same-sex marriage is officially legal. Experiences among LGBTQ couples in the post-legalization of same-sex marriage era raise questions about the context of growing recognition and cultural acceptance of same-sex relationships. I conducted in-depth interviews with LGBTQ parents to learn how they navigate parenting and the construction of parenting roles in the context of a society that has legalized same-sex marriage, yet still is rooted in heteronormative notions of family and parenthood. Specifically, I ask: How do LGBTQ couples construct and make sense of their roles as parents, particularly within the contemporary context of the legalization of same-sex marriage? Understanding the contexts that shape LGBTQ parents’ experiences aids in not only understanding the lives of LGBTQ parents and their families better, but also developing a deeper understanding of contemporary parenting identities and experiences more broadly.
Marjorie C. Feinson and Tamar Ben Dror
Purpose and methodology – Many adult women struggle with serious eating problems (EPs) and obesity is increasing, yet, little is known about the origins of EPs, which often begin…
Abstract
Purpose and methodology – Many adult women struggle with serious eating problems (EPs) and obesity is increasing, yet, little is known about the origins of EPs, which often begin in childhood. Personal Narratives with 25 Israeli Jewish women in recovery from EPs explore (a) types of childhood experiences, (b) the connection between childhood experiences and subsequent EPs, and (c) why food!
Findings a.Analyses of personal narratives uncover a broad range of emotionally abusive experiences in childhood (CEA) including continuous criticism about body shape and weight, emotional neglect and abandonment, death or illness in the family in the absence of a nurturing adult, conflict and tension surrounding parental divorce or dysfunctional marriage, geographic dislocation, and aftermath of the Holocaust.b.Interviewees explicitly identified CEA as the cause of their turning to food for comfort in childhood and subsequently developing lifelong EPs.c.Why food! It was easily accessible, its sweetness took away the pain - temporarily, children replicated parents' unhealthy relationship with food, it was abundant and central in Jewish cultural, ethnic and religious traditions.
Research Implications – This research documents the critical contribution of emotionally abusive experiences in childhood to the development of EPs and confirms the need for additional research.
Practical Implications – The findings warrant a shift in policies and practices to address the role of emotional abuse in the development and maintenance of EPs. Moreover, policies focused on obesity, particularly among youth, need to recognize the contribution of CEA – in addition to poor dietary choices and lack of exercise.
Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to define and explain a curriculum of parents, its purpose and importance as an addition to teacher education curriculum, and how the…
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to define and explain a curriculum of parents, its purpose and importance as an addition to teacher education curriculum, and how the author lives out this curriculum alongside teacher candidates.
Approach – The chapter gives an account of the author's narrative inquiry into the lived experiences of two teacher candidates who were engaged in a curriculum of parents.
Findings – The chapter highlights how the teacher candidates’ acceptance of dominant notions of parents as outsiders to the processes of schooling or as individuals to be wary or fearful of was interrupted by their experiences within a curriculum of parents. An account is given of their dis/positioning as they came to “un-know” their understandings of professional as someone with power and control and to reknow it as an act of standing together with parents; as a reflection of the “person to person.”
Research implications – This initial narrative inquiry makes visible how intentionally making and living out a curriculum of parents alongside teacher candidates impacts their beliefs and assumptions about parents and the way in which they position themselves as teachers in their work with parents and families.
Value – The value of the chapter is that it is the first work that has detailed a curriculum of parents. The chapter shows the major contributions such a curriculum can add to teacher education programs – as it moves the curricular commonplace of milieu from a subordinated position in relation to the other commonplaces of student, teacher, and subject matter to one of coordination.
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Malene Gram, Anette Therkelsen and Jacob Roesgaard Kirkegaard Larsen
This paper aims to explore mixed emotions experienced by parents and children on holiday, how they are dealt with and how they influence the way “family” is “staged” and “done”.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore mixed emotions experienced by parents and children on holiday, how they are dealt with and how they influence the way “family” is “staged” and “done”.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on 24 qualitative interviews with Danish parents and a questionnaire study reporting answers from 66 Danish children (11-15-year-old).
Findings
Problems external and internal to the family are identified and the latter are associated with more unease particularly among parents. This paper shows that parents invest significant narrative efforts in transcending gaps between ideals and practices. Also children are aware of the gaps between ideals and practices; they seem more matter-of-fact, however, regarding critical aspects of holidays.
Research limitations/implications
The informants of the study solely represent two-parent hetero-sexual families of Danish origin, and so inclusion of a wider range of families would have added interesting perspectives. Furthermore, children’s perspectives on critical holiday incidents need further research.
Practical implications
Creators of family holiday products and marketing should present a more nuanced imagery taking a more diverse approach to what “family” on holiday looks like. They could take up the challenge of depicting a broader range of family situations, also showing less harmonious moments, using humour, and showing opportunities for some “alone time” for both parents and children should relational overload happen. Also occasional “wifi-free” moments seem to be much appreciated by all family members, and development of offline family experiences would seem to strike a chord.
Social implications
The contemporary paradigm of intensive parenting along with strong ideals for family holidays make it essential for parents to narratively deal with and legitimize and transform less happy moments. To take pressure off contemporary families, it is important to bring to the fore the less glossy aspects of family holidays.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper is to illustrate the strong efforts applied by families to keep up a certain front to be the family that “ought to be” by nurturing and narrating positive emotions in relation to family holidays. The inclusion of children’s voices gives insights into children’s annoyance with parents’ rowing, relational overload and parents’ occasional lack of attention to children, for example through parental use of mobile phones during holiday togetherness.
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Anna Rosa Favretto and Francesca Zaltron
One of the aspects that characterises neoliberal societies is the increasing attribution of individual responsibility. Citizens are required to commit themselves to adopting…
Abstract
One of the aspects that characterises neoliberal societies is the increasing attribution of individual responsibility. Citizens are required to commit themselves to adopting ‘appropriate’ lifestyles and to self-managing their health. Individual responsibility translates into a set of knowledge and techniques of self-governance, through which individuals learn and are expected to act in an increasingly autonomous way in order to prevent or mitigate health risks. This fostering of self-governance and individual responsibility affects both children and adults; in accordance with it, adults are required to transmit a sort of model of “pedagogy of responsibility” (Neyrand & Mekboul, 2014), through which children learn to acquire self-management of their health. This scenario becomes complicated if we take into consideration the two usual and contrasting representations of childhood in western societies: children as active subjects, or children as vulnerable subjects. Our work explores these contrasting representations through the narrations of adults and children of their experiences of Type 1 Diabetes.
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In response to the divides identified by some UK writers between critical legal scholarship, left political agendas, and empirical, policy-driven, socio-legal research, and…
Abstract
In response to the divides identified by some UK writers between critical legal scholarship, left political agendas, and empirical, policy-driven, socio-legal research, and indications of similar divides in the US, this essay seeks to demonstrate the possibilities for work that negotiates between progressive political commitments, social and political theory, policy concerns, and social scientific approaches to the interface between law and society. It does so by reference to three case studies of critical, feminist socio-legal scholarship, which address policy issues in the areas of family law, the legal profession, and access to justice.
Emma Cooke, Maria Brenner and Valerie Smith
This study aims to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted parents of autistic children and their families in Ireland.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted parents of autistic children and their families in Ireland.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative thematic analysis methodology was applied using semi-structured interviews. A total of 12 parents (ten mothers, one father and one grandfather speaking on behalf of a mother) of autistic children were asked how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted them and their autistic child with a particular focus on how it has impacted their access to respite care. Interviews were completed remotely from July 2021 to October 2021.
Findings
Data analysis identified four themes that reflect an adverse pandemic impact. These were: world gone; alone and isolated; constantly fighting for help; and negative and positive impact of COVID-19 on child and family. Two parents reported positive outcomes of the pandemic such as social distance requirements. Five parents (42%) reported an increase in the amount of respite received. Three parents (25%) reported a decrease and four (33%) parents reported no change in their access to respite.
Research limitations/implications
COVID-19 has turned a spotlight on mental health for politicians, policymakers and the public and provides an opportunity to make mental health a higher public health priority for autistic children and their families.
Originality/value
This study highlights the need for access to respite for autistic children and for respite services to be responsive to the ongoing needs, in particular, the mental health needs of autistic children and their family, particularly in a crisis situation.
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Aaron Payne, Helen Proctor and Ilektra Spandagou
This article examines the educational decision-making of hearing parents for their deaf children born during a period (1970–1990s) before the introduction of new-born hearing…
Abstract
Purpose
This article examines the educational decision-making of hearing parents for their deaf children born during a period (1970–1990s) before the introduction of new-born hearing screening in New South Wales, where the study was conducted, and prior to the now near-universal adoption of cochlear implants in Australia.
Design/methodology/approach
We present findings from an oral history study in which parents were invited to recall how they planned for the education of their deaf children.
Findings
We propose that these oral histories shed light on how the concept, early intervention – a child development principle that became axiomatic from about the 1960s – significantly shaped the conduct of parents of deaf children, constituting both hope and burden, and intensifying a focus on early decision-making. They also illustrate ways in which parenting was shaped by two key structural shifts, one, being the increasing enrolment of deaf children in mainstream rather than separate classrooms and the other being the transformation of deafness itself by developments in hearing assistance technology.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to a sociological/historical literature of “parenting for education” that almost entirely lacks deaf perspectives and a specialist literature of parental decision-making for deaf children that is almost entirely focussed on the post cochlear implant generation. The paper is distinctive in its treatment of the concept of “early intervention” as a historical phenomenon rather than a “common sense” truth, and proposes that parents of deaf children were at the leading edge of late-20th and early-21st century parenting intensification.
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Craig M. Reddock, Elena M. Auer and Richard N. Landers
Branched situational judgment tests (BSJTs) are an increasingly common employee selection method, yet there is no theory and very little empirical work explaining the designs and…
Abstract
Purpose
Branched situational judgment tests (BSJTs) are an increasingly common employee selection method, yet there is no theory and very little empirical work explaining the designs and impacts of branching. To encourage additional research on BSJTs, and to provide practitioners with a common language to describe their current and future practices, we sought to develop a theory of BSTJs.
Design/methodology/approach
Given the absence of theory on branching, we utilized a ground theory qualitative research design, conducting interviews with 25 BSJT practitioner subject matter experts.
Findings
Our final theory consists of three components: (1) a taxonomy of BSJT branching features (contingency, parallelism, convergence, and looping) and options within those features (which vary), (2) a causal theoretical model describing impacts of branching in general on applicant reactions via proximal effects on face validity, and (3) a causal theoretical model describing impacts on applicant reactions among branching designs via proximal effects on consistency of administration and opportunity to perform.
Originality/value
Our work provides the first theoretical foundation on which future confirmatory research in the BSJT domain can be built. It also gives both researchers and practitioners a common language for describing branching features and their options. Finally, it reveals BSJTs as the results of a complex set of interrelated design features, discouraging the oversimplified contrasting of “branching” vs “not branching.”
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