Revisiting Red Flags: Autoethnographic Mother-Writing Through Social, Political, and Biological Precarity

• In Event: DisCrit Mothering: Interrogating Consequential Education for Our Children's Lives and Humanity

Abstract

Purpose
Critical Race Parenting (ParentCrit) involves, “educational praxis that can engage both parent and child in a mutual process of teaching and learning about race, especially ones that debunk dominant messages about race” (Matias, 2016, p.3). ParentCrit (Matias, 2016) is rooted in understandings of racial realism (Bell, 1995), which account for the permanence of racism (Delgado, 1995; Nishi, 2018). However, ParentCrit scholarship has yet to explicitly foreground the permanence of racism and ableism (Annamma et al., 2013). As such, DisCrit Mothering offers a supportive theoretical framework to support parents in examining and relating racial and ability realism with their children.
I explore and reflect on the implications of DisCrit Mothering as a white, nondisabled, queer ciswoman, a parent of two young children whose development raised “red flags” (McGuire, 2016) amid multiple social crises imbued with precarity (Whatcott & Ben-Moshe, 2021), and an emerging critical scholar doing research with multiply-marginalized parents and children. I asked:
What are the personal and political implications of DisCrit Mothering for a white, nondisabled motherscholar conducting research with/about multiply-marginalized parents and children?
How can a praxical framework of DisCrit Mothering support reflection on the permanence of ableism and racism, as well as politicized action in times of social, political, and biological precarity?



Methods and Data Sources
I engaged in autoethnographic mother-writing (Nishi, 2018; Sotirin, 2010) over the course of two years. The data sources included were photos, videos, daily journals, and analytical memos from my doctoral research study. I accumulated and maintained photos, videos, and daily journals during my pregnancy and the first two years of my children’s lives. Because I foreground my identity as a motherscholar, I incorporated data sources which represented my experiences and thoughts as a mother and as a researcher during the same time period.

Findings
As a white, nondisabled, queer ciswoman born in the U.S. to a monolingual, working-class, English-speaking family, my training as an educator and researcher has been steeped in the critical teachings and orientations of frameworks like DisCrit. As an emerging scholar, my research is primarily grounded in asset-based perspectives and partnerships with multiply-marginalized parents, families, and communities (e.g., culturally sustaining pedagogies, funds of knowledge). However, becoming a mother to white children in the middle of my doctoral program crucially disrupted how I understood, articulated, and engaged my multiple positionalities and roles, especially in times of varied, continuous precarity due to multiple social crises (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, racial uprisings). Further, navigating the developmental milestones and delays of my young children caused me to interrogate the “red flags” (McGuire, 2016) raised about my children by white institutional professionals and extended family members.

Scholarly Significance
Through an autoethnographic study of how a white motherscholar engaged in critical reflexivity around her own research and mothering in times of precarity, I discuss how whiteness and ability functioned as property (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011). I offer methodological and theoretical implications for white motherscholars engaged in research which foreground disability and race alongside other social identities.

Author

• Chelsea Stinson, SUNY - College at Cortland
  Presenting Author