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pheloniusfriarA very interesting idea, but I don't think it's one of my better essays. I went to the library because I couldn't really find anything on this specific topic anywhere else, so I really think I'm breaking a bit of ground with the concept at least. The research specialist at the library suggested that it was more of a Ph.D. topic than one appropriate for a 2nd year essay ;). I got good feedback last year from my 3rd year Feminist Political Theory prof on my essay that used the post-modern theory I learned in feminist disability theory to examine the issue of performing analysis on multicultural issues without falling into cultural appropriation or imperialism. Funny enough, I turn to feminist disability theory again in this essay... I'm noticing a trend (well, and the fact that it seriously excites me as a framework in which to examine just about any social or political issue... it has been suggested to me by more than one member of the faculty there that I do post-graduate work on it... sigh). Anyway, the course this essay is for is titled "Critical Intersections of Gender, Race, and Class", and the prompt for the essay (one of 9 I could choose from) was: "Disability, accessibility and space (you need to figure out which space you want to focus on for this topic)".
Parenthood as Impairment
in a Neo-Liberal Capitalist Society
Impairment in our society can lead to disability — in the workplace, in congregations of people, in taking care of every day needs, in the dynamics of interpersonal relationships — that can grow to dominate or even define one’s value or place within the world. While the impact of this socially constructed identity is utterly pervasive and intrusive into the life of the so disabled, it is amplified by all the same intersecting factors that lead to disadvantage in the neo-liberal capitalist society that is being actualized by the Global North: gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, nationality, immigrant status, and heritage with respect to colonization (e.g. aboriginal peoples all over the world) to name some key factors. While the impacts of physical and overt mental impairments on the accessibility to infrastructure and the means of participating in this capitalist society has been well documented, there are many other conditions whose symptoms and intersectional profile mirror that faced by those with visible impairments. One of these is the systematic disability imposed on individuals with the impairment of parenthood.
Before tackling the notion parenthood as impairment leading to disability, an understanding of how disability actualizes within our society must be examined. There is still considerable disagreement on how to define “disability”; however, since it is an ambiguous and socially constructed condition that changes with time, the mainstream — if it can be called that — of research into disability, and organizations such as the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Science in the United States, conceptualizes disability only with reference to the environments in which it might manifest within:
It should be emphasized that the “social model” of disability, where disability is socially constructed, is in direct contrast to the “medical model”, where disability is seen to be objectively manifested by the individual — at worst, as freaks of nature or monsters that are “evidence” they or their parents (usually mother) were engaging in witchcraft, and at “best” as conditions that need to be “cured” for the so disabled to stand a chance of entering the ranks of “normal” or even “humanity” for extreme cases:
The social model also lacks the popular awareness necessary to counteract the “common sense” understanding in our society of disability as a medical condition in need of control and censure, but that does not diminish the need to continue theorizing the full extent to which disability was and is made manifest in our society. This model at least provides a framework for that analysis. The social model of disability is a powerful tool for showing how individual impairments can lead to “disability”. When looked at the other way around though, an impairment does not need to be a physical or mental condition that applies to an individual, it can be a socially created impairment that applies to a class of people — that, through a second level of socially realized construction, leads to a disability in one or more environments. When thus distanced from the individualistic medical model of impairment, many conditions — broad categories such as gender, race, class, immigrant status, and ancestry (aboriginals again come immediately to mind as case in point) — can be seen to qualify as valid impairments possible of manifesting as disabilities. Impairments, including those socially constructed ones, can then be found by looking for the disabled within society and, using a forensic approach to intersectional analysis, tracking the components back to the impairments that lead to it. It is within this analysis framework that parenthood can be considered as just such an impairment.
If the potential impact of an impairment is defined solely in context of its environment, what are the environments in which parenthood can manifest itself as a disability? While there are many aspects of life that are impacted by those who find themselves with children, whether intentionally or not, the ability to participate in the global economy is severely affected — particularly in concert with any co-factors that already impact people attempting to function in that environment. In the neo-liberal capitalist society we are so diligently constructing at the beck of those few who stand most to benefit from a homogeneous uniformly able-bodied workforce, there are powerful forces arrayed against all who are deviant in any way from their vision. Barriers are erected within large corporations in order to ensure that their workforce is as homogeneous as possible, and if such barriers are illegal within a particular state, they will move the work to another state with no such protections for the workers there. In fact, in many jurisdictions, legislation to protect the disadvantaged in the workplace is more for show than function. For instance, the US Family and Medical Leave Act “applies only to those workers who can afford to take unpaid leave and also happen to work for the 5 percent of American corporations that employ more than 50 people”. (Colker) With thoughtful consideration it becomes clear such legislation only protects the right of a sufficiently wealthy individual to self-censure their transgression from the capitalist workplace environment rather than offering any sort of integration there for their status as a parent. The fact that there is legislation at all, even if imperfect, shows that protection in the workplace is needed to safeguard workers who are “afflicted” with the impairment of parenthood. While the situation is somewhat less dire in Canada, “[t]he Canadian statutes contain no reasonable accommodation requirements for pregnancy or sex discrimination. Yet the courts have implied a reasonable accommodation requirement [... under the Human Rights Code, ...]. The Canadian courts; however, have not been uniformly flexible in providing accommodation” (Colker) leaving accessibility to the workplace for parents without explicit protection. As Canada, and the rest of the Western world, seems to grow toward embracing the neo-liberal capitalist agenda, the pressure is to adopt American style “laissez faire” economics or risk losing a seat at the table of the nations allowed to be rich.
One of the reasons why parenthood is still on the fringes of disability analysis, and is often derided as a cause for accommodation in the courts, is the notion that, in “almost all” cases, parenthood is entered into by choice and, as such, is a self-inflicted impairment — much like poverty and addiction is seen as “self-inflicted” by those who do not suffer from it:
In her book “Feminist Perspectives on Disability”, Fawcett paraphrases Shakespeare2 and Morris3: “[d]evalued groupings by default confirm the valuation of other groupings”, and thus “a definition of normality must rest on the definition of abnormality”, so “disabled people are continually objectified by the reaction of others; reactions which include staring, pity and hostility”. (Fawcett) The backlash, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, against disability related legislation (and, similarly, legislation to assist disadvantaged groups such as women and minorities), can be seen as a reaction of those who have come to think of themselves as “normal” to the notion that the “other” is not so different from them and needs to be respected and accepted and de-othered. The social backlash against benefits for parents, including extended leave, daycare benefits, and supplemental healthcare is an indirect confirmation that parenthood is now considered a deviant lifestyle — a departure from “normal” — and one that should not be condoned through active supports from the state. The argument is that such support will increase taxes and encourage individuals to shun the labour force altogether and stay home to raise children, or at least suffer the negative effects — the disability — that having and raising children brings with it on productivity in the global workforce.
But if being a parent is a disadvantage in this new hypercapitalist system, there are many important intersecting factors that affect the probability and impact of parenthood. Obviously, the very wealthy do not need to concern themselves with the downsides as they don't even need to have the children themselves — whether through adoption or hiring someone to have a child for them — and then have no need to take care of the children themselves once acquired as they can afford to pay others to leave them free of the burdensome part of the process. In the middle class where there are two or more caregivers in the household, and depending on the lifestyle choices they have made, it is sometimes possible to choose for one person, usually a woman, to provide full time care for their children or to place the children in daycare and provide freedom of choice to that household member as to how to occupy themselves (whether in a capitalist pursuit or otherwise). Increasingly, members of middle class families must all work to afford to maintain their middle class lifestyle, and so children must be placed in the care of others. However, when one starts to examine families from poor backgrounds or who have ended up poor, are members of a disadvantaged minority or immigrant population, are households with single parents (usually women), include members with significant physical or mental impairments, or just have the misfortune to live in the Global South, the exclusionary impact multiplies until there is little possibility of such individuals participating in desirable segments of the economy:
But it is not a foregone conclusion that the world will allow the Global North's notions of neo-liberal global capitalism to succeed in the long term. While those controlling this movement are filling their pockets with unimaginable wealth, they are also undermining the strengths and cohesion of the societies that provided them with the imperialist power to enact their agendas. Against the backdrop of globalization, there continues to be a counter-movement to prevent the dystopian future just presented. If a disability is only relevant in context of particular environments or spaces, whether an impairment becomes a disability in those environments is a function of the level of its accessibility. An accessible society is one in which people with impairments can readily participate, and respects the basic dignity and civil rights of all individuals within a given society “to participate in all of that society’s activities: education, work, commerce, civic life, and government programs and services”. (Dell Orto) The classic example of accessibility is that of a person in a wheelchair attempting to access a government office or place of business: if the architecture does not provide them with a means of entering and navigating the space, then it is inaccessible to that person and their impairment manifests as a physical disability. The question with respect to parenthood becomes one of how to move past the thinking of the industrial revolution and neo-colonial imperialist world of global corporations and into a society where the private domain of child rearing and the public domain of the workplace are merged. This concept goes far beyond the notion of “reasonable accommodation” or access — which only addresses the symptoms of the underlying issues — and requires a deep analysis of the role of reproduction in our society. The theoretical framework for such an exploration is largely in place or being constructed under the guise of “feminist disability studies,” and can be applied to analysis of parenthood as a potentially disabling impairment in a hypercapitalist environment, and subsequently theorize solutions that might be employed to leverage this notion to illustrate the damaging effects of neo-liberal policies as part of a strategy of resistance to it. Abstract concepts arrived at through post-modernist deconstruction of the means by which neo-liberalism is manifesting itself in our society has failed to grab the hearts and minds of the public, but a tangible argument showing the threat to parenthood and the notion of “family” might.
Footnotes
References
Altman, Barbara. Expanding the scope of social science research on disability. Stamford Conn.: JAI Press, 2000.
Bonner, Adrian. Social exclusion and the way out: an individual and community response to human social dysfunction. Chichester England;Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
Colker, Ruth. American law in the age of hypercapitalism: the worker, the family, and the state. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Dell Orto, Arthur. Encyclopedia of disability and rehabilitation. New York;London: Macmillan Library Reference USA;;Simon & Schuster and Prentice Hall International, 1995.
Fawcett, Barbara. Feminist perspectives on disability. Harlow England;New York: Prentice Hall, 2000.
Institute of Medicine (U.S.)., and Edward Brandt. Enabling America assessing the role of rehabilitation science and engineering. Washington, D.C.:: National Academy Press, 1997.
in a Neo-Liberal Capitalist Society
Impairment in our society can lead to disability — in the workplace, in congregations of people, in taking care of every day needs, in the dynamics of interpersonal relationships — that can grow to dominate or even define one’s value or place within the world. While the impact of this socially constructed identity is utterly pervasive and intrusive into the life of the so disabled, it is amplified by all the same intersecting factors that lead to disadvantage in the neo-liberal capitalist society that is being actualized by the Global North: gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, nationality, immigrant status, and heritage with respect to colonization (e.g. aboriginal peoples all over the world) to name some key factors. While the impacts of physical and overt mental impairments on the accessibility to infrastructure and the means of participating in this capitalist society has been well documented, there are many other conditions whose symptoms and intersectional profile mirror that faced by those with visible impairments. One of these is the systematic disability imposed on individuals with the impairment of parenthood.
Before tackling the notion parenthood as impairment leading to disability, an understanding of how disability actualizes within our society must be examined. There is still considerable disagreement on how to define “disability”; however, since it is an ambiguous and socially constructed condition that changes with time, the mainstream — if it can be called that — of research into disability, and organizations such as the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Science in the United States, conceptualizes disability only with reference to the environments in which it might manifest within:
A person might not be disabled in the family environment but might be in the work environment. Another person with the same physical impairment might be disabled in the family environment but not in the work environment. Thus, knowledge of a medical diagnosis alone cannot be used, a priori, to determine whether or not the person can be categorized as “disabled”. Nor can it indicate the level or extent of disability the person would experience. In this context, disability becomes a socially determined condition. (Altman)In its report “Enabling America: Assessing the Role of Rehabilitation Science and Engineering”, the IOM writes about the current dominant accepted model for disability, “the social model of disability”:
As originally described by Saad Nagi in the 1950s [...], the disabling process has four major components: pathology, impairment, functional limitation, and disability. [...] Disability is the expression of the gap between a person's capabilities and the demands of the environment — the interaction of a person's limitations with social and physical environmental factors. Many disabling conditions are thus preventable or reversible with proper and adequate rehabilitation, including environmental modification. A secondary condition is any additional physical or mental health condition that occurs as a result of having a primary disabling condition. Secondary conditions quite often increase the severity of an individual's disability and are also highly preventable. [emphasis in original] (Institute of Medicine (U.S.). and Brant)While it isn't explicit, the effects of “secondary conditions” as described closely parallels the notion of “intersectionality” — where the resultant effects of the primary condition is amplified by the effects of the intersecting secondary conditions, which further amplify the secondary conditions and so on in a positive feedback loop until either a suitable accommodation is made to alleviate some of the disabling conditions or the person so affected suffers a total breakdown and enters a different phase of manifesting the effects of the disability inflicted upon them.
It should be emphasized that the “social model” of disability, where disability is socially constructed, is in direct contrast to the “medical model”, where disability is seen to be objectively manifested by the individual — at worst, as freaks of nature or monsters that are “evidence” they or their parents (usually mother) were engaging in witchcraft, and at “best” as conditions that need to be “cured” for the so disabled to stand a chance of entering the ranks of “normal” or even “humanity” for extreme cases:
Institutions such as the workhouse and the large bureaucratized asylums contained and controlled those deemed incapable of operating in accordance with accepted tenets and surveilling and disciplining themselves. The asylums became increasingly medicalised and also incorporated, in line with the emphasis placed on scientific endeavour and progress, a curative function. [...] As far as Foucault was concerned, this led to the control of ‘unreason’ and to the moral and mental as well as physical imprisonment. For individuals regarded as ‘different’, medical practices became the ultimate form of surveillance. (Fawcett)As the categorization and medicalisation of the “disabled” — which did often include women for being women, the poor, and those with addictions — became more and more fetishised and rigorous through the 19th and 20th centuries, it dovetailed cleanly into one of the more extreme expressions of the othering process: eugenics. Eugenics leveraged the medical model to justify the elimination of the “other” from “humanity”, and included not only those with obvious physical or mental impairments, but also included judgements based on skin colour, culture/ancestry (e.g. the Jewish people and aboriginals), and even class and gender — all judged against an arbitrary “perfect” white male. One of the great critiques of the medical model is the notion that we are all only “temporarily able bodied” and that we are all “disabled” in our early youth and in our old ages, and almost everyone encounters some physical and/or mental impairment at one or more stages of our in-between years. When looked at this way, the disabled cannot be “other” because it is each and every one of us in turn — although this does not stop society from trying to hide away that fact through institutional supports to rid society of such offending individuals, or providing technologies (e.g. plastic and reconstructive surgery) to mask its effects. Unfortunately this is far from being a conceptualization known by, much less accepted by, the general population, and as such has little impact on the overall understanding or success of mitigating strategies against the othering of the disabled in our society.
The social model also lacks the popular awareness necessary to counteract the “common sense” understanding in our society of disability as a medical condition in need of control and censure, but that does not diminish the need to continue theorizing the full extent to which disability was and is made manifest in our society. This model at least provides a framework for that analysis. The social model of disability is a powerful tool for showing how individual impairments can lead to “disability”. When looked at the other way around though, an impairment does not need to be a physical or mental condition that applies to an individual, it can be a socially created impairment that applies to a class of people — that, through a second level of socially realized construction, leads to a disability in one or more environments. When thus distanced from the individualistic medical model of impairment, many conditions — broad categories such as gender, race, class, immigrant status, and ancestry (aboriginals again come immediately to mind as case in point) — can be seen to qualify as valid impairments possible of manifesting as disabilities. Impairments, including those socially constructed ones, can then be found by looking for the disabled within society and, using a forensic approach to intersectional analysis, tracking the components back to the impairments that lead to it. It is within this analysis framework that parenthood can be considered as just such an impairment.
If the potential impact of an impairment is defined solely in context of its environment, what are the environments in which parenthood can manifest itself as a disability? While there are many aspects of life that are impacted by those who find themselves with children, whether intentionally or not, the ability to participate in the global economy is severely affected — particularly in concert with any co-factors that already impact people attempting to function in that environment. In the neo-liberal capitalist society we are so diligently constructing at the beck of those few who stand most to benefit from a homogeneous uniformly able-bodied workforce, there are powerful forces arrayed against all who are deviant in any way from their vision. Barriers are erected within large corporations in order to ensure that their workforce is as homogeneous as possible, and if such barriers are illegal within a particular state, they will move the work to another state with no such protections for the workers there. In fact, in many jurisdictions, legislation to protect the disadvantaged in the workplace is more for show than function. For instance, the US Family and Medical Leave Act “applies only to those workers who can afford to take unpaid leave and also happen to work for the 5 percent of American corporations that employ more than 50 people”. (Colker) With thoughtful consideration it becomes clear such legislation only protects the right of a sufficiently wealthy individual to self-censure their transgression from the capitalist workplace environment rather than offering any sort of integration there for their status as a parent. The fact that there is legislation at all, even if imperfect, shows that protection in the workplace is needed to safeguard workers who are “afflicted” with the impairment of parenthood. While the situation is somewhat less dire in Canada, “[t]he Canadian statutes contain no reasonable accommodation requirements for pregnancy or sex discrimination. Yet the courts have implied a reasonable accommodation requirement [... under the Human Rights Code, ...]. The Canadian courts; however, have not been uniformly flexible in providing accommodation” (Colker) leaving accessibility to the workplace for parents without explicit protection. As Canada, and the rest of the Western world, seems to grow toward embracing the neo-liberal capitalist agenda, the pressure is to adopt American style “laissez faire” economics or risk losing a seat at the table of the nations allowed to be rich.
One of the reasons why parenthood is still on the fringes of disability analysis, and is often derided as a cause for accommodation in the courts, is the notion that, in “almost all” cases, parenthood is entered into by choice and, as such, is a self-inflicted impairment — much like poverty and addiction is seen as “self-inflicted” by those who do not suffer from it:
Kimberly Hern Troupe was employed as a saleswoman in the women's accessories department at Lord & Taylor1. She experienced extreme nausea while pregnant and frequently reported to work late or had to leave early. Although her employment record had been perfect before she became pregnant, she was fired the day before her maternity leave was to commence. Troupe brought suit alleging that her employer fired her because of her pregnancy and would have tolerated similar illness if experienced by a male employee. Her lawsuit was unsuccessful, with the court blaming Troupe for her nausea, seemingly buying the stereotype that nausea occurs during pregnancy only in the morning. Thus, the court of appeals [...] blames her for the “morning sickness” by suggesting that she caused it to last until noon “because she slept later under the new schedule”. (Colker)While this is a case in the United States, it does cast into sharp relief the neo-liberal approach to the private lives of citizens attempting to participate in the global economy, as well as the ubiquitous understanding of pregnancy and parenthood as medical, individual, self-inflicted (or at least selfish), deviant conditions that must be treated, hidden away, or face segregation from productive society. As a single parent myself of two daughters with serious impairments that often impacted my productivity and attendance at work (and continues to do so as I attend university full time now), I can vouch from personal experience that Canada is in no way immune from this sort of thinking and the discrimination that results from it. In pre-industrial times, parenthood was respected and understood to be a critical component of both society and productivity itself. During the industrial revolution and most of the 20th century, parenthood was recognized as being necessary to produce new labourers; however, it was still seen to be a distraction from the levels of productivity that were desired by those that controlled the means of production. As a solution, men were designated as the workers and allowed to operate in the public sphere, and women were relegated to the private sphere to raise the children in such a manner as to unencumber men from their capitalist tasks. In the modern, global, neo-liberal society, raising children is no longer seen as a necessary distraction from the all-important “bottom line”. When there are 7 billion people to choose from and production can be moved to where the people will accept, or at least not be able to fight against, the imposition of strict controls against productivity lost due to procreation provides a powerful weapon for the elite. Again, having children becomes a transgressive act to be met by exclusion from, or at least reduced participation in, the economy.
In her book “Feminist Perspectives on Disability”, Fawcett paraphrases Shakespeare2 and Morris3: “[d]evalued groupings by default confirm the valuation of other groupings”, and thus “a definition of normality must rest on the definition of abnormality”, so “disabled people are continually objectified by the reaction of others; reactions which include staring, pity and hostility”. (Fawcett) The backlash, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, against disability related legislation (and, similarly, legislation to assist disadvantaged groups such as women and minorities), can be seen as a reaction of those who have come to think of themselves as “normal” to the notion that the “other” is not so different from them and needs to be respected and accepted and de-othered. The social backlash against benefits for parents, including extended leave, daycare benefits, and supplemental healthcare is an indirect confirmation that parenthood is now considered a deviant lifestyle — a departure from “normal” — and one that should not be condoned through active supports from the state. The argument is that such support will increase taxes and encourage individuals to shun the labour force altogether and stay home to raise children, or at least suffer the negative effects — the disability — that having and raising children brings with it on productivity in the global workforce.
But if being a parent is a disadvantage in this new hypercapitalist system, there are many important intersecting factors that affect the probability and impact of parenthood. Obviously, the very wealthy do not need to concern themselves with the downsides as they don't even need to have the children themselves — whether through adoption or hiring someone to have a child for them — and then have no need to take care of the children themselves once acquired as they can afford to pay others to leave them free of the burdensome part of the process. In the middle class where there are two or more caregivers in the household, and depending on the lifestyle choices they have made, it is sometimes possible to choose for one person, usually a woman, to provide full time care for their children or to place the children in daycare and provide freedom of choice to that household member as to how to occupy themselves (whether in a capitalist pursuit or otherwise). Increasingly, members of middle class families must all work to afford to maintain their middle class lifestyle, and so children must be placed in the care of others. However, when one starts to examine families from poor backgrounds or who have ended up poor, are members of a disadvantaged minority or immigrant population, are households with single parents (usually women), include members with significant physical or mental impairments, or just have the misfortune to live in the Global South, the exclusionary impact multiplies until there is little possibility of such individuals participating in desirable segments of the economy:
Social exclusion is something that can happen to anyone. But some people are significantly more at risk than others. Research has found that people with certain backgrounds and experiences are disproportionately likely to suffer social exclusion. The key risk factors include: low income; family conflict; being in care; school problems; being an ex-prisoner; being from an ethnic minority; living in a deprived neighbourhood in urban and rural areas; mental health problems, age and disability. (Bonner)In fact, in this global economy, the relative class of a family is increasingly becoming a key factor as to the level of disability that can generally be expected for those who have children:
Poverty is relative and highly variable across the world and is linked to the state of the world’s socio-economic development. In addressing the issue of ‘Globalisation and Marginalisation’, Bundell4 presents the following argument: “It is now widely recognised that poor (and not so poor) communities — both North and South — are sharing an increasingly common experience as a result of recent global economic forces. Nowadays corporations, investors and financial dealers — those with wealth and resources — communicate and do business on a global basis. They manufacture where costs are lowest and they invest or deal where profits are highest.”When increasing neo-colonial and imperialist pan-global corporate dominance is factored in, the agenda of achieving a homogeneity of the workforce, and excluding those who cannot conform by leveraging intersecting disadvantages, will continue to amplify the disabling impact of parenthood until those who have children will be relegated to the margins of society — a ghetoization of society for the reproductive class.
But it is not a foregone conclusion that the world will allow the Global North's notions of neo-liberal global capitalism to succeed in the long term. While those controlling this movement are filling their pockets with unimaginable wealth, they are also undermining the strengths and cohesion of the societies that provided them with the imperialist power to enact their agendas. Against the backdrop of globalization, there continues to be a counter-movement to prevent the dystopian future just presented. If a disability is only relevant in context of particular environments or spaces, whether an impairment becomes a disability in those environments is a function of the level of its accessibility. An accessible society is one in which people with impairments can readily participate, and respects the basic dignity and civil rights of all individuals within a given society “to participate in all of that society’s activities: education, work, commerce, civic life, and government programs and services”. (Dell Orto) The classic example of accessibility is that of a person in a wheelchair attempting to access a government office or place of business: if the architecture does not provide them with a means of entering and navigating the space, then it is inaccessible to that person and their impairment manifests as a physical disability. The question with respect to parenthood becomes one of how to move past the thinking of the industrial revolution and neo-colonial imperialist world of global corporations and into a society where the private domain of child rearing and the public domain of the workplace are merged. This concept goes far beyond the notion of “reasonable accommodation” or access — which only addresses the symptoms of the underlying issues — and requires a deep analysis of the role of reproduction in our society. The theoretical framework for such an exploration is largely in place or being constructed under the guise of “feminist disability studies,” and can be applied to analysis of parenthood as a potentially disabling impairment in a hypercapitalist environment, and subsequently theorize solutions that might be employed to leverage this notion to illustrate the damaging effects of neo-liberal policies as part of a strategy of resistance to it. Abstract concepts arrived at through post-modernist deconstruction of the means by which neo-liberalism is manifesting itself in our society has failed to grab the hearts and minds of the public, but a tangible argument showing the threat to parenthood and the notion of “family” might.
Footnotes
- Troupe v. May Department Stores, 20 F.3d 734 (7th Cir. 1994).
- Shakespeare, T. (1994) ‘Cultural Representation of Disabled People: Dusbins for Disavowal?’ in Disability and Society, 9(3): 283-99.
- Morris, J. (1993b) Pride Against Prejudice, London: Women’s Press.
- Bundell, K. (1999). Local Lives and Livelihoods in a Global Economy. London: Church Action on Poverty Educational Trust.
References
Altman, Barbara. Expanding the scope of social science research on disability. Stamford Conn.: JAI Press, 2000.
Bonner, Adrian. Social exclusion and the way out: an individual and community response to human social dysfunction. Chichester England;Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
Colker, Ruth. American law in the age of hypercapitalism: the worker, the family, and the state. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Dell Orto, Arthur. Encyclopedia of disability and rehabilitation. New York;London: Macmillan Library Reference USA;;Simon & Schuster and Prentice Hall International, 1995.
Fawcett, Barbara. Feminist perspectives on disability. Harlow England;New York: Prentice Hall, 2000.
Institute of Medicine (U.S.)., and Edward Brandt. Enabling America assessing the role of rehabilitation science and engineering. Washington, D.C.:: National Academy Press, 1997.
