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Article published In:
Storytelling in the Digital Age: New challenges
Edited by Anna De Fina and Sabina M. Perrino
[Narrative Inquiry 27:2] 2017
► pp. 357–377

Multiple selves

Gujarati women’s narratives of mothering a child with an intellectual disability

| Texas Christian University
| Oklahoma State University
The paper presents findings from narrative analyses of interviews with 16 Gujarati women caring for a child with an intellectual disability in a midsized city in India. Participants’ mothering narratives articulate the multiple selves (or identities) they have constructed in the context of their child’s disability. In efforts to align with the cultural discourse on good mothering, women in this study sometimes narrate themselves as knowledge bearers and as agents, as people who labor and triumph over difficult circumstances, but at other times vulnerable and victimized as they navigate both their daily responsibilities and the social expectations and discourses regarding mothering. The identity narratives educate the audience of what mothering a child with an intellectual disability means in this unique sociocultural context.
Keywords: narrative analysis, intellectual disability, Indian mothers, identity, qualitative research
Article outline
  • Multiple selves: Gujarati women’s narratives of mothering a child with disability
    • Narrative analysis of mothering a child with an intellectual disability: A review of literature
    • Socio-cultural context
    • Socio-cultural context of storytelling
  • Methodology
  • Narrative analysis: Constructing selves
  • Narrative structure: Narrated selves
    • Resolved and evolving self
    • Devoted self: “My World”
    • Invisible laboring self
    • Communal self
    • Agentic and knowledge bearing self
  • Conclusion and implications
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.27.2.08joh
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2024. Experiences of family carers in providing care to children with intellectual disabilities in India: A qualitative evidence synthesis. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities 37:5 DOI logo
Dhillon, Megha & Shatarupa Bhattacharya
2023. Representations of mothers having children with disability in Hindi cinema: a feminist thematic analysis. Disability & Society ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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