Interactive Narrative Study: Mothering Children With Autism

Mothering Children with Autism

The mothering stories that Bergum (1997) describes of being and becoming mother are proliferative in the literature of the story of mothering and caring for a child

20

with a disability. In her interactive narrative study interviewing mothers with children with a variety of complex and chronic disabilities, Green (2003) shows that the experience of mothering a child with a disability transcends the disability diagnosis. As a mother with a daughter diagnosed with cerebral palsy, Green dialogues with a mother with twins, where one twin is diagnosed with autism. The experience of mothering a child with a physical or developmental disability had both very similar characteristics, and too, there were divergent features of what it is

More specifically, in a sample of 33 families of children with autism, Gray (2003) looked at the gender role differences that parents displayed in the coping strategies that they used to come to terms with their child’s highfunctioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis. Mothers in this study voiced the disparate struggles they faced in caring for their child with Asperger’s syndrome, such as the intention to work outside of the home, but had the inability to do so because of the immense demands that their family life places on their responsibility inside of the home

(Gray, 2003). Contrastingly, fathers felt less impacted by their child’s autism than the mothers of their children, especially because of the fathers’ often indirect role in the care of the child (Gray, 2003). Corroborating with this notion, Gray (1993) suggests that it is the mothers who take on more responsibility for the family care, where fathers are more on the peripheral, as “reserve source of support for their wives” (Gray, 2003, p. 635).

Using discourse analysis in a qualitative study of stigma as experienced by