LIVING LIMINALITY: MATERNAL SUBJECTIVITY IN THE CONTEXT OF RAISING CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Autism is a severe developmental disorder that begins at birth or within the first few years of life. Research shows that mothers do the bulk of the parenting work in raising children with special needs, including autism. Despite the prevalence of autism, a dearth of literature considers, as central, the maternal experience in raising a child with special needs. This qualitative study focuses on the disorder of autism with the objective of elucidating how the context of autism shapes maternal meaning-making and subjectivity. Additionally, this dissertation examines how mothers of children with autism construct or reconstruct their meanings of motherhood as a result of their maternal experiences. Grounded theory methods were employed in order to develop theory from the conceptualization of the data. The investigation consisted of in-depth audio taped interviews with 15 mothers of a child diagnosed with autism and participant observation in monthly parent support groups in the metropolitan Atlanta area. Results showed that the experiences of raising a child in the current sociohistorical context of autism give rise to distinct maternal practices and perceptual processes that, over time, shape maternal subjectivity. More specifically, the context of autism is shaped by the experience of liminality, that is, the experience of existing between conditions that is characterized by the dislocation of established contexts, structures and systems an