212
Views
1
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

Embodying experience and expertise: comparing mother and intended-mother activism in the cases of infertility and autism

&
Pages 326-340 | Received 27 May 2015, Accepted 07 Jan 2016, Published online: 13 Apr 2016
 

ABSTRACT

This paper compares the advocacy of mothers and intended mothers in the fields of autism and infertility. Mothers and intended mothers have developed a special competence in dealing with professionals, and in negotiating the delicate balance between expert medical discourses and expertise grounded in their situated knowledge and experiences. Drawing on the social movement and public policy literature, we seek to disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about the gendered role of women and mothers in these complex and emotionally charged policy fields. We argue that (intended) mothers are far more likely than other women to take on the major advocacy role considering their need to respond to bodily, social, and/or cultural ‘failures’ imposed on them by the medical establishment. Issues of access to fertility treatments and care for autistic children not only provide a vantage point from which to study their experience in the policy arena, but also to ask broader questions about the role of the welfare state and the shifting authority of experts in policy processes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We use (intended) mother instead of ‘mother and intended-mother’ in order to simplify the text.

2 These interviews were conducted during Audrey L'Espérance Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture doctoral research. See, L'Espérance, A. (2013). Fertilize-this: framing infertility in Quebec, Ontario and England between 1990 and 2010 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada.

3 The autism research was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada #410–2007–0256.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture (FQRSC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

PDF download + Online access

  • 48 hours access to article PDF & online version
  • Article PDF can be downloaded
  • Article PDF can be printed
USD 53.00 Add to cart

Issue Purchase

  • 30 days online access to complete issue
  • Article PDFs can be downloaded
  • Article PDFs can be printed
USD 708.00 Add to cart

* Local tax will be added as applicable

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.