The incoming of the other : a comparative study of published narratives of mothers of children with disability

Abstract

This study is addressing the way disability is lived and constructed by the mothers as recounted in their writing. This is done through five different narratives written by mothers of children with disability. These mothers’ experiences were compared in order to make sense of the way they construct their lives before and after learning about their children’s disability and during the changes that occurred in their lives. Particular reference was made to their relationship with the medical spectrum, other family members, society, educational institutions and their child. The themes elicited from the narratives were scrutinized under the philosophical ideas of Edward Said and Jacques Derrida. The main focal theme is that of otherness, which is about deconstructing fixed meanings and perceptions. This was used to read the mothers’ narratives away from any close reading of texts influenced by normative discourses about people with disabilities. The different philosophical ideas drawn from Said and Derrida, which were crucial during the reading of the stories and also during their deconstruction, show that the way we tend to organise lives around particular norms restricts and pushes people with disabilities and their mothers into margins. As a matter of fact, the issue of ‘perfection’ and ‘normality’ is often raised. This study is also a study of my own sense of otherness as the author of this thesis, a mother-to-be and a teacher. In this study I am not a spectator but I am part of the narratives as well because I am in the process of becoming a mother but at the same time I am not yet a mother of a child who has been profiled with a disability. The fundamental target of this study is not to provide a solution or a set of innovative ideas but it aims to push the reader away from his comfort zone and set him thinking.