Unfit and cast aside: portrayals of mothering with intellectual disability in Québec court reports

ABSTRACT

Many mothers with intellectual disabilities lose their parental rights due to child welfare (CW) concerns. Despite the growing interdisciplinary scholarship on parenting with intellectual disabilities, there is scant research that has explored the discursive practices embedded within CW or family courts involving mothers with intellectual disabilities. The aim of this study is to explore portrayals of mothering with intellectual disability in CW court reports filed in Québec, Canada. A three-level critical discourse analysis was performed, focusing on 10 reports that were retrieved from a publicly available legal database, and their larger discursive societal context. Analysis highlighted unequal power relations as discursive practice underpinned by the following discursive patterns: (1) The ideal caregiver vs the unfit mother (2) Devalued voices of mothers with intellectual disability (3) Professionals as holding authoritative knowledge and (4) Decision-making based on the best interest of the child. Revealing the hidden ideological assumptions embedded in discourse can help to challenge and confront injustice faced by mothers with intellectual disability within the CW system.

KEYWORDS:

• Mothers
• intellectual disabilities
• critical discourse analysis
• court reports
• child welfare

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the terms intellectual disability, in keeping with first people-first language within the North America context and the (French) terminology most prevalently used in the texts we analyzed within the study. For the controversies of people-first language and political arguments for the use of identity-first language, particularly within the UK, see for instance Shakespeare (2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Pacheco

Laura Pacheco is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Social at McGill University. She has over a decade of experience in research and practice in the field of intellectual disability and her research has focused on intersecting oppressions, narrative inquiry, critical explorations of professional practices and injustice faced by women and mothers with intellectual disability.

Rahel More

Rahel More is Senior Scientist at the department of Educational Science, University of Klagenfurt, Austria. Her expertise and research interests are in the fields of Dis/Ability Studies, Social Pedagogy/Social Work and Participatory Research. Rahel completed her PhD thesis with a qualitative study on the complex meaning of societal attributions and perceptions for the parental self-understanding of mothers and fathers with intellectual disabilities in Austria. She has worked on several other research projects critically exploring parenthood and intellectual disabilities. Currently her research focuses on ableism and intersectionality and she is involved in a collaborative research project about de-institutionalization with the local self-advocacy movement of people with intellectual disabilities.

Marjorie Aunos

Marjorie Aunos is an internationally renowned researcher, adjunct professor at two Canadian Universities, clinical psychologist and published author. She is the chair of the Parenting Special Interest Group of the International Association on the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disability. She is a leading expert in the field of parents and parenting with an intellectual disability particularly around assessment, evidence-based interventions, service delivery and advocacy.

Rachelle Rose

Rachelle Rose completed the dual social work and law program at McGill University. Her master's project focuses on racial discrimination. Rachelle's research interests center around discrimination and intersectionality. Her recent research projects have focused on equality and inclusion.