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This book focuses on the lived realities of disabled mothers to examine how they navigate their multiple competing responsibilities and identities. It reimagines normative constructions of motherhood, dependency, and care while rethinking advocacy and resistance, in the context of disability, gender, and mental health.
List of contents
1 Locating the Research, Researchers, and the Field of Enquiry
2 Motherhood and Ideal Mothering: Negotiations with Ableist Discourses
3 Care Experiences of Disabled Mothers: Rethinking the Question of Capacity
4 Mothering and Care in the Context of Autism and Intellectual Disability: Narratives of Interdependence
5 Responding to Ableism and Redefining Motherhood: A Balancing Act
6 Rethinking Disability, Advocacy, and the Politics of Care
Appendices
About the author
Priyasha Choudhary is a researcher exploring the intersections of disability, gender, sexuality, and care in India. She has worked as a research assistant/associate at the University of Amsterdam and at IIT Hyderabad respectively, contributing to projects on intellectual disability, gender, and long-term care. Trained in core social sciences, she draws on critical disability studies, medical anthropology, kinship, and feminist ethnography to examine how ableism and patriarchy shape care and kinship. With strong feminist underpinnings, her research is guided by critical and rights-based perspectives, centering lived experiences and feminist methodologies.
Shubha Ranganathan is an associate professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. Her strengths lie in employing qualitative approaches and interdisciplinary perspectives in research projects in (mental) health, gender, and disability. She has studied local healing practices among marginalised groups as well as mental health and disability-related issues in India. Grounded in critical and social justice perspectives, her work focuses on lived experiences and the role of advocacy for social change. She is exploring questions about parenting and care in the context of autism as part of her engagement with the neurodiversity discourse.
