Dis-mantling stigma: Parenting disabled children in an age of ‘neoliberal-ableism’

Abstract

The concept of ‘stigma’ is a dominant presence in many disciplines, yet it frequently remains ill-defined, individualist, and dislocated from matters of power, inequality and resistance. Extending a budding literature on rethinking the sociology of stigma, I draw upon interviews with parents of children with Down’s syndrome to revisit one of sociology’s most enduring concepts. I explore how parents articulate new imaginaries of difference which depart from narratives of disability as tragic and pitiful, and promote notions of dignity and worth. Parents talk of their children as a reason for celebration and pride, discuss their experiences of convivial community relations and public interactions, and praise evolving configurations of disability in popular media. Yet parents simultaneously highlight painful, convoluted and exhausting experiences with institutions (education, healthcare, welfare) as part of what they believe to be a wider (structural) hostility to disability that forces them into a series of ‘fights’ and ‘battles’. Whilst parents resist deficit framings of their children, and their lives more broadly, they lament dwelling in a society whereby disabled people, and their families, navigate enmity and indifference. In this article, then, I dis-mantle common conceptions of stigma by revealing not only its interactional properties, but also its political economy, in which disabled people are devalued, discounted, and cast as disposable in an age of ‘neoliberal-ableism’ (Goodley 2014).