Women’s perceptions of how their dyslexia impacts on their mothering

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• dyslexia
• identity
• life-stories
• intersection
• mothering
• disability
• reframing

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the 10 women who participated in the research, as well as Joo Lim, Fiona MacGill and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on this paper.

Notes

1. I am not suggesting here that being an ‘insider’ is the only way to produce quality research material. My other area of academic work is on survivors’ experiences of criminal justice responses to rape, and I have not been a victim of rape myself. What being an ‘insider’ can provide is a level of pre-understanding that if used reflexively can help access, aid empathy, facilitate conversation and enhance analysis.

2. When I decided to do an auto-ethnographic study I found the best way for me to start was to write a series of interwoven stories about different aspects of my life. Whilst I wrote a number of different stories, the themes that I felt could most clearly explain how dyslexia, work and mothering intersected in my life were those used for the semi-structured part of the interviews in this research. However, I only knew this because I know where these stories fit within my version of my life-story ‘as a whole’. What I did not want to do was impose what I saw as ‘my’ most important experiences and related stories on the women I interviewed. Giving the women the opportunity to tell their story/stories first without interruption from me – before starting the semi-structured part of the interview – allowed themes to emerge in their own words with their own emphasis.