Mothering as Politicized Action Through Identity: Expanding DisCrit Mothering Through Collective Autoethnography

• In Event: Voices of Advocacy: Family and Caregiver Perspectives on Disability in Education

Abstract

“Motherscholar” is not about living in the duality of identities of mother and scholar; instead, it acknowledges how identities intentionally unite into one newly formed identity. Our autoethnographic stories draw from how we negotiate our participation in normative motherhood (Gabriel, 2024) and who gets to claim motherhood and how it appears. We also share the tensions of academia as mothers and draw from the “academic baby penalty” (Mason, 2013; Torres, 2021) as more recent acknowledgements of motherhood penalties have become apparent (Holzknect & Westbrook, 2025). We explore DisCrit mothering in conversation with Crip Spacetime (Price, 2024) to analyze how motherhood, disability, normativity, and neurodivergence converge on the academic landscape.

Authors

• Saili S. Kulkarni, San Jose State University

• Katie Mae McCabe, Buffalo State University - SUNY

• Gabrielle Elizabeth Bernal, California State University - Monterey Bay

• Benikia Kressler, California State University - Fullerton

• Lilly Padia, Erikson Institute

• Laurie Gutmann Kahn, Moravian University