Marking and erasing: Classed practices of visibility in mothering Israeli children with invisible disabilities

IF 1.5 3区社会学 Q2 WOMENS STUDIES

Womens Studies International Forum Pub Date : 2025-01-31 DOI:10.1016/j.wsif.2025.103059

Lauren Erdreich , Susie Russak

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Viewing visibility as a category of social analysis, which implies recognition through relationship and has properties of strategy and field, we conceptualize mothering practices of children with invisible disabilities as processes of ‘marking-and-erasing.’ Based on interviews with Israeli mothers during COVID, we ask: What practices do mothers use to mark and erase their children's disabilities? What practices are marked as good mothering? How do these processes of marking and erasing negotiate classed ideals of normativity for children and mothers? Our findings indicated that low-income mothers mark disability to acquire professional support for children's disabilities, claiming this as their ‘proper’ mothering role, whereas middle-class mothers erase disability through intensive mothering, marking it as theirs. The negotiation of visibility of disability and mothering relationally reveals that the social construction of invisible disabilities works through material and symbolic links in the private-public nexus.

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来源期刊

Womens Studies International Forum WOMENS STUDIES-

CiteScore

2.50

自引率

7.10%

发文量

审稿时长

79 days

期刊介绍： Women"s Studies International Forum (formerly Women"s Studies International Quarterly, established in 1978) is a bimonthly journal to aid the distribution and exchange of feminist research in the multidisciplinary, international area of women"s studies and in feminist research in other disciplines. The policy of the journal is to establish a feminist forum for discussion and debate. The journal seeks to critique and reconceptualize existing knowledge, to examine and re-evaluate the manner in which knowledge is produced and distributed, and to assess the implications this has for women"s lives.