This changes everything: a critical reflection on the impact of internalized ableist constructs on becoming a disabled mother

Abstract

The lived experiences of women with disabilities within their mothering role have received little attention in the literature. Even more scant is the perspective of women who become disabled after entering into motherhood. This ethnographic study documents the experiences of a mother, professional, and international researcher who is catapulted into the disableist world and is propelled to suddenly negotiate her newly appointed identities. This critical reflection leads to exposing the internalized ableist discourses and provides the terrain for a resistance identity based on character strengths, resiliency, and purpose. It centers around developing an identity based on mothering within an inter-dependency model. This study contributes to the fields of disability studies, mothering, and positive psychology.

Points of Interest

• The scientific literature has a significant gap in research from the perspective of mothers with acquired disabilities.

• This article looks at the first author’s journey adapting and accepting her new disability while being a single mother.

• Mothers who have a disability often face strong biased attitudes against their capacity to parent; often, those attitudes come from their own internal discourse. This is called internalized ableism.

• internalized ableism makes us believe that we may not be good enough because we do not compare to a certain standard; like the standard that mothers should be able to run after their child, which a mother with disability might not be able to do.

• The first author learned that reflecting on our own journeys can make us more empowered in our roles, such as our role of parent with a disability.

Keywords:

• ableism
• parenthood
• ethnography
• critical reflection
• disabilities
• identity

Acknowledgements

The first author would like to express her gratitude to every researcher who has published or helped conceptualize the notions of ableism, disablism, and internalized ableism as well as researchers who have brought forward the power of positive psychology and character strengths. Your fields of study have validated her experience more than she could write in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.