Mothering through sensory processing disorder : class and agency in the age of medicalisation in Malta

Abstract

This dissertation explores how mothers of children with sensory processing disorder (SPD) in Malta strategically navigate fields of power within structures of disease categorisation. The controversial diagnosis means that mothers become active agents within a politics of diagnostic legitimacy, that implicates ideologies of the ‘good’ mother. In order to do this, concepts of power will be rooted in a broader view of social life based on Bourdieu’s (1986) theories of habitus and capitals. This qualitative research is based on individual in-depth interviews with seven mothers and three experts. Thematic analysis is used within a social constructionist epistemology. This study’s results raise the question of inequities in healthcare provision for children with sensory integrative difficulties. This dissertation concludes that mothers of children with SPD are not disempowered by the medical profession in the process of medicalisation. Rather, medicalisation is being navigated by a complex alliance of powerful agents, including mothers, occupational therapists and other professionals. The impact of SPD on mothers was dependent on the meaning they assigned to the SPD label and on the level of acceptance of the diagnostic label by others. Through their own skilled navigation of the medical and educational systems, the mothers were able to draw upon their own forms of capital to tactically maximise their children’s access to resources and limit negative implications of a diagnostic label. The relationship of trust between the mothers and the occupational therapist influences the legitimate competence of the therapist and legitimacy of SPD.