ERIC Number: EJ870774
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Nov
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1360-3116
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Available Date: N/A
Gendered Ironies in Home Care: Surveillance, Gender Struggles and Infantilisation
Malacrida, Claudia
International Journal of Inclusive Education, v13 n7 p741-752 Nov 2009
Women are normatively expected to provide nurturance to the men in their lives through emotional support, and to the children in their lives through active, involved and expert mothering--indeed, being a caregiver is a master status for adult women in modernity. While this may be the case for all women, mothers who are disabled can have more a complicated relationship to caregiving than others, because they are both receivers and providers of care in the home. Women with chronic disabilities are often recipients of home care services that are designed to provide them with ongoing personal care, housekeeping assistance and health or support services. Conversely, mothers with disabilities, like all mothers, are expected to be providers of services to their partners and children. In this article, I examine the contradictions and tensions embedded in disabled mothers' relations of care, with a particular focus on the ways that barriers embedded in public home care service delivery complicate disabled mothers' abilities to provide care. I find that home care policies operate in ways that assume that disabled women will not, perhaps even should not, fill gendered partnership or mothering roles. In turn, this can cause problems for these women in terms of providing care, of achieving adequate mothering and occasionally, of maintaining custody of their children.
Descriptors: Mothers, Sex Role, Social Bias, Females, Parents with Disabilities, Social Attitudes, Barriers, Delivery Systems, Parent Role, Child Rearing, Home Health Aides, Personal Narratives, Parent Attitudes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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