Moral laboratories Mattingly, Cheryl
2014., 20141003, 2014, 2014-10-03
eBook
Moral Laboratoriesis an engaging ethnography and a groundbreaking foray into the anthropology of morality. It takes us on a journey into the lives of African American families caring for children ...with serious chronic medical conditions, and it foregrounds the uncertainty that affects their struggles for a good life. Challenging depictions of moral transformation as possible only in moments of breakdown or in radical breaches from the ordinary, it offers a compelling portrait of the transformative powers embedded in day-to-day existence. From soccer fields to dinner tables, the everyday emerges as a moral laboratory for reshaping moral life. Cheryl Mattingly offers vivid and heart-wrenching stories to elaborate a first-person ethical framework, forcefully showing the limits of third-person renderings of morality.
This book explores the life experiences of children who are born with a variety of medical or physical disorders. It provides an integration of scientific and personal perspectives on such ...conditions. In accounting for both outcomes, it suggests how the social responses of others (family, friends, and professionals) may foster resilience as well as risk. It also describes the results of an intervention that facilitates the more positive experiences of such children early in life.
Recent years have seen an explosion in the number of children diagnosed with "invisible disabilities" such as ADHD, mood and conduct disorders, and high-functioning autism spectrum disorders. Whether ...they are viewed as biological problems in brain wiring or as results of the increasing medicalization of childhood, the burden of dealing with the day-to-day trials and complex medical and educational decisions falls almost entirely on mothers. Yet few ask how these mothers make sense of their children's troubles, and to what extent they feel responsibility or blame.Raising Generation Rxoffers a groundbreaking study that situates mothers' experiences within an age of neuroscientific breakthrough, a high-stakes knowledge-based economy, cutbacks in public services and decent jobs, and increased global competition and racialized class and gender inequality.
Through in-depth interviews, observations of parents' meetings, and analyses of popular advice, Linda Blum examines the experiences of diverse mothers coping with the challenges of their children's "invisible disabilities" in the face of daunting social, economic, and political realities. She reveals how mothers in widely varied households learn to advocate for their children in the dense bureaucracies of the educational and medical systems; wrestle with anguishing decisions about the use of psychoactive medications; and live with the inescapable blame and stigma in their communities.
Using an interdisciplinary perspective to discuss the intersection of language development and learning processes, this book summarizes current knowledge and represents the most critical issues ...regarding early childhood research, policy, and practice related to young bilingual children with disabilities.
To examine the correlations between forgiveness and well-being in mothers of children with disabilities, considering the moderating role of contextual factors.
Well-being in mothers of children with ...disabilities is associated with coping with the numerous and unique challenges of motherhood. These are often accompanied by a sense of guilt, harm, and shame. Forgiveness can play an important role in lowering these negative emotions.
The research was conducted with 174 mothers of children with disabilities, using the Emotional Forgiveness Scale; the Decision to Forgive Scale; and the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire. Contextual factorssuch as: severity of transgression, apology, and the quality of the relationship with the offender were also measured. Moderation analyses were used to examine the associations between the variables.
Decisional and emotional forgiveness correlated positively with well-being. Contextual factors moderated only the relationship between emotional forgiveness and well-being. Severity of the transgression and apology had a moderating effect in the case of the Presence of positive emotions, and relationship quality in the case of Reduction of negative emotions.
The well-being of mothers of children with disabilities is associated with both decisional and emotional forgiveness. Contextual factors are an important moderator of the relationship between emotional forgiveness and well-being in these mothers.
Information about the importance of the relationship between forgiveness and well-being can be used to design therapeutic programs and programs supporting mothers of children with disabilities in coping with difficulties and achieving well-being. Such programs can incorporate, for example, forgiveness training.
•The association between forgiveness and well-being in mothers of children with disabilities is moderated by contextual factors•The relationships between emotional forgiveness and well-being are moderated by contextual factors.•The model for emotional forgiveness: Reduction of negative emotions explains the variance in the psychological well-being of the mothers of children with disabilities better than the model: Presence of positive emotions.
When children are born with disabilities or become disabled in childhood, parents often experience bewilderment: they find themselves unexpectedly in another world, without a roadmap, without ...community, and without narratives to make sense of their experiences. The Disabled Child: Memoirs of a Normal Future tracks the narratives that have emerged from the community of parent-memoirists who, since the 1980s, have written in resistance of their children’s exclusion from culture. Though the disabilities represented in the genre are diverse, the memoirs share a number of remarkable similarities; they are generally written by white, heterosexual, middle or upper-middle class, ablebodied parents, and they depict narratives in which the disabled child overcomes barriers to a normal childhood and adulthood. Apgar demonstrates that in the process of telling these stories, which recuperate their children as productive members of society, parental memoirists write their children into dominant cultural narratives about gender, race, and class. By reinforcing and buying into these norms, Apgar argues, “special needs” parental memoirs reinforce ableism at the same time that they’re writing against it.
In a climate of tightened budgets and severe demands on public literacy resources, Conner and Plocharczyck go to the foundations of social justice in Cultural Studies to show how the means of ...integrating those with disabilities into libraries and communities can be found in our everyday practices.
Inclusive education is a complex and problematic concept that raises many questions. A team of prominent academics present fresh and critical perspectives on these issues, drawing upon their global ...resources and knowledge.The over-arching theme of this book is that social, political, economic and cultural contexts play a central role in determining whether or not inclusive education is implemented in a range of regions and countries around the world. A series of original and provocative conclusions is presented, such as:
inclusive education means creating a single system of education, which serves all children
inclusive education is a site of conflicting paradigms of children with special needs, centering on a psycho-medical model and a socio-political model
while many countries seem committed to inclusive education in their rhetoric, legislation and policies, in practice this often falls short.
This major landmark resource is suitable for educational policy makers, researchers, teacher educators, students and international agencies with interests in education.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other national policies are designed to ensure the greatest possible inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of American life. But as a ...matter of national policy we still place the lion’s share of responsibility for raising children with disabilities on their families. While this strategy largely works, sociologist Dennis Hogan maintains, the reality is that family financial security, the parents’ relationship, and the needs of other children in the home all can be stretched to the limit. In Family Consequences of Children’s Disabilities Hogan delves inside the experiences of these families and examines the financial and emotional costs of raising a child with a disability. The book examines the challenges families of children with disabilities encounter and how these challenges impact family life. The first comprehensive account of the families of children with disabilities, Family Consequences of Children’s Disabilities employs data culled from seven national surveys and interviews with twenty-four mothers of children with disabilities, asking them questions about their family life, social supports, and how other children in the home were faring. Not surprisingly, Hogan finds that couples who are together when their child is born have a higher likelihood of divorcing than other parents do. The potential for financial insecurity contributes to this anxiety, especially as many parents must strike a careful balance between employment and caregiving. Mothers are less likely to have paid employment, and the financial burden on single parents can be devastating. One-third of children with disabilities live in single-parent households, and nearly 30 percent of families raising a child with a disability live in poverty. Because of the high levels of stress these families incur, support networks are crucial. Grandparents are often a source of support. Siblings can also assist with personal care and, consequently, tend to develop more helpful attitudes, be more inclusive of others, and be more tolerant. But these siblings are at risk for their own health problems: they are three times more likely to experience poor health than children in homes where there is no child with a disability. Yet this book also shows that raising a child with a disability includes unexpected rewards—the families tend to be closer, and they engage in more shared activities such as games, television, and meals. Family Consequences of Children’s Disabilities offers access to a world many never see or prefer to ignore. The book provides vital information on effective treatment, rehabilitation, and enablement to medical professionals, educators, social workers, and lawmakers. This compelling book demonstrates that every mirror has two faces: raising a child with a disability can be difficult, but it can also offer expanded understanding.