527 - Thematic Session. Allies and Obstacles: Parents of Children with Disabilities and the Disability Rights Movement

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

"The role of parents of children with disabilities in disability rights activism has provoked some contention. Some scholarship positions parents as vibrant, path-blazing advocates who fight selflessly for the rights and needs of their children (Blum 2007; Jones 2010). Other work, however, characterizes parents as a barrier to social change, especially insofar as they often espouse models of disability rooted in tragedy, medical narratives, and paternalism. For example, historian Kathleen Jones (1998) shows the ways in which mothers in the early twentieth accepted the pathologization of their children in the hopes of normalizing them and enhancing their own status as “good mothers.” Anthropologist Gail Landsman (2009) similarly shows that in the modern era mothers still largely judge their value as mothers (and/or feel judged by others) in terms of the normalization and successful adaptation of their disabled children which inhibits the formation of disability pride and resistance (see also Kittay 2009).ii

This panel, titled Allies and Obstacles: Parents of Children with Disabilities and the Disability Rights Movement will explore the complex historical and contemporary relationship of parents of people with disabilities to the Disability Rights Movement. In particular, we will draw on three different disability communities: intellectual disability, autism, and mental illness. Through comparing experiences within each community, we will provide a systematic comparison/contrast related to the strategies, goals, and rights positions of different parent groups to understand the historical specificity of each case and to examine the factors that shape parent activism in relation to disability rights. Rather than creating a dichotomy of ""good"" and ""bad"" parents, we will explore the complex relationship between parents and disability rights, both in terms of organizational agendas and individual narratives. The presenters on the panel are currently working on a book on this topic.
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Sub Unit

• Thematic Sessions

Session Organizer

• Allison C. Carey, Shippensburg University

Panelists

• Pamela Block, Stony Brook University, SHTM

• Allison C. Carey, Shippensburg University

• Richard K. Scotch, University of Texas at Dallas