Books by Claudia Malacrida
Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, 2020
Until recently, the experiences of disabled mothers have been unexamined, even within disability-... more Until recently, the experiences of disabled mothers have been unexamined, even within disability-specific research; these women are also notoriously underserved by policies and supports relating to families and parenthood more broadly. Importantly, this lack of information about and accommodation for the experiences and needs of mothers with disabilities is often at the root of the challenges faced by disabled women in bearing, raising and maintaining custody of their children. The dearth of information, policy and services relating to disabled mothering is firmly embedded in historical and enduring ideas about disability and the right to reproduce and rear children. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to speculate that this elision operates as a covert yet consistent extension of the history of disability in general and eugenics in particular. In this chapter, I begin with a brief summary of foundational literature on problematic discourse and practice regarding the 'appropriateness' of parenting with a disability. This is followed by a consideration of gender specificity in terms of mothering (as opposed to 'parenting') a child while disabled. I then move on to an overview of some challenging intersections between current policies and services and disabled women's experiences of becoming and being a mother, arguing that although overt and often legal eugenics programs have been rescinded, covert and quasi-legal means persist in limiting disabled women's access to reproductive justice. I conclude with some suggestions for researching and theorizing mothering and disability, arguing specifically for a feminist and poststructural approach to understanding the barriers and possibilities in policies and practices relating to mothering and being disabled.
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This book (University of Toronto Press, 2015) draws on archival documents and oral histories of s... more This book (University of Toronto Press, 2015) draws on archival documents and oral histories of survivors of Provincial Training School/Michener Centre, a total institution for ‘mental defectives’ that opened in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada in 1923 and that continues to operate to the present.
Michener began as a training institution, with seemingly benign goals and the intent of providing specialized training with hopes of community reintegration. It quickly grew into a facility that acted as a virulent means of passive eugenics. ‘Trainees’ were inducted into the institution in childhood and often spent their entire lives without hope of re-entry into society, effectively keeping them from ‘contaminating’ the general population. These children and adults lived in social isolation, under extremely horrifying conditions; they were subject to economic exploitation inside the institution and in the community surrounding it, they were heavily and often unnecessarily medicated and made to participate in medical experimentation. Many of them were involuntarily sterilized as part of Alberta’s Eugenics Act, which ended only in 1972.
The story of Michener Center that Malacrida offers is more than a litany of woes. It is also an examination of how Michener Center operated as part of a constellation of official institutions that operated virtually without scrutiny or accountability for much of the 20th century. The Eugenics Board, the Departments of Health and Education, a network of Mental Health Facilities in the province, and Guidance Clinics that were both permanently located in the cities and also offered regular visits to smaller centers, all served to funnel ‘defective’ people into the institutions. By outlining this system and its practices, this book offers a critique of public policy and professional practices that, although fashionable at the time, in retrospect seem nothing short of draconian. Making such a history public offers a cautionary tale to current practitioners and policy-makers in the field of what is euphemistically called ‘human services’ (including policy makers and psychiatric, medical and educational experts who deal with human difference).
The book draws on oral histories from 22 survivors of the institution, archival materials from Michener Center and relevant government sources, and interviews with several ex-workers to flesh out a picture of how social policy without social accountability can go terribly wrong. In so doing, Malacrida constructs a clear argument that facilities like Michener Center have no place in our current ‘services’ for people with intellectual, physical and mental health disabilities.
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"Sociology of the Body is an introductory text reader that provides students with insight into th... more "Sociology of the Body is an introductory text reader that provides students with insight into theories and issues that shape contemporary perspectives of the body. Combining the work of classical theorists with modern-day sociological theory, the text takes a broad approach to achieving a sociological understanding of the body.
Readership : An introductory text-reader aimed at second- to fourth- year university students studying courses in Sociology of the Body; Sociology of Heath, Illness, and Well-Being; Body and Society; Social Theory and the Body, Women, Men, and the Body.
"
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Mothers of children with Attention Deficit Disorder must inevitably make decisions regarding thei... more Mothers of children with Attention Deficit Disorder must inevitably make decisions regarding their children's diagnosis within a context of competing discourses about the nature of the disorder and the legitimacy of its treatment. They also make these decisions within an overriding climate of mother-blame. Claudia Malacrida's Cold Comfort provides a contextualized study of how mothers negotiate with/against the 'helping professions' over assessment and treatment for their AD(H)D children.
Malacrida counters current conceptions about mothers of AD(H)D children (namely that mothers irresponsibly push for Ritalin to manage their children's behaviour) as well as professional assumptions of maternal pathology. This thought-provoking examination documents Malacrida's extensive narrative interviews with mothers of affected children in both Canada and the United Kingdom, and details the way in which these women speak of their experiences. Malacrida compares their narratives to national discourses and practices, placing the complex mother-child and mother-professional relations at the centre of her critical inquiry.
Drawing on both poststructural discourse analysis and feminist standpoint theory, Malacrida makes a critical contribution to qualitative methodologies by developing a feminist discursive ethnography of the construction of AD(H)D in two divergent cultures. On a more personal level, she offers readers a moving, nuanced, and satisfying examination of real women and children facing both public and private challenges linked to AD(H)D.
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Mourning the Dreams is an accessible and moving account of parents’ experiences of grief and reco... more Mourning the Dreams is an accessible and moving account of parents’ experiences of grief and recovery after losing and infant during pregnancy, childbirth, or within the first month of life. Drawing from the sociology of emotions, health research and psychology, her own experience, and a range of qualitative methods, Claudia Malacrida finds that bereaved parents not only grieve their child and its unrealized potential, but often find their personal experiences are at odds with social forces and prevailing assumptions about the nature of their loss and how they should react to is. She explores the meanings parents create as they face denial, silence, and other reactions from friends, family, communities, coworkers, the medical community, and even within spousal relationships. She also describes the courage and creativity of parents who create and negotiate meanings that help them grieve, recover, and manage relationships.
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Papers by Claudia Malacrida
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Cold Comfort, 2003
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The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2018
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Mourning the Dreams, 2016
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Current Sociology, 2015
Women’s childbirth choices occur within contested discourses about medical, natural, and woman-ce... more Women’s childbirth choices occur within contested discourses about medical, natural, and woman-centered births. All three perspectives, to slightly differing degrees, presume an autonomous female subject who makes childbirth choices. Thus informed choice is posed as a crucial corrective to the increasing medicalization of childbirth. This article employs a critical feminist analysis to examine how women learn about childbirth and make choices long before the moment of informed choice. Interviews with 40 pregnant and recently birthing women in two cities in Alberta, Canada illustrate how media, family and friends, and prenatal courses comprised core pre-birth knowledge systems informing women’s decision-making. The interviews exposed how medicalization is naturalized in these knowledge systems, so that women approached their actual births with an already-medicalized set of perceptions. This already-medicalized knowledge foreclosed women’s choices, a finding that complicates arguments...
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Societies, 2012
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Gender & Society, 2012
Women in North America have many childbirth options. However, they must make these choices within... more Women in North America have many childbirth options. However, they must make these choices within a complex culture of birthing discourse characterized by competing knowledges and claims regarding the “ideal birth” as medicalized, natural, or woman centered. We interviewed 21 childless women and 22 new mothers to explore their perceptions of choice and birthing. The women’s interviews indicated that their birthing choices are reflective of tensions embedded in normative femininity; conflicting ideas relating to purity, dignity, and the messiness of birth; and contradictions about women’s bodies as heteronormative sites of pleasure and sexuality on one hand and of asexual, selfless sources of maternal nurturance on the other. Finally, the women’s views reflected understandings of moral and normative constructs about selflessness as a core attribute of femininity and motherhood, particularly in terms of enduring pain as the “proper” means of accomplishing the rite of passage to mother...
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Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2005
Oudshoorn concludes that the aim of clinical testing for male contraceptives is a quest for zero ... more Oudshoorn concludes that the aim of clinical testing for male contraceptives is a quest for zero risk, an impossible task that has certainly not been attempted for female contraceptives. This bias is a consequence of the different ways in which the needs of men and women are socially constructed. While difficulties related to cultural gender norms can be resolved through the use of social tactics, a crucial problem concerning the development of male contraception stems from real biological differences between males and females. Although unintended pregnancy is a common concern when testing new contraceptives, the assessment of male contraceptives involved a new ethical twist since “this risk did not concern the bodies on which the contraceptives were tested” (p. 80). Oudshoorn informs us that the ethical concerns regarding pregnancy risk were highly controversial because several WHO member states (including the preClinton U.S.) refused to provide funding that might be used for abortion. Several additional concerns are a consequence of this situation, including the ability to obtain informed consent and the possibility that male partners could control women’s bodies. Apart from institutional concerns, it would be fascinating to hear how individual men and their female partners negotiated these potential risks. It may be unseemly to complain that Oudshoorn’s book is too thorough, too detailed, or that she proves her case too painstakingly. However, sometimes the thrust of her argument does get lost in the mass of detail. Thankfully, Oudshoorn provides excellent chapter summaries to help keep the reader on-track. I learned a lot from the data presented in The Male Pill, but I would have appreciated further discussion about the more subjective aspects affecting adoption of male contraception. A corollary study including interviews with potential users and their potential female partners would help get at the more interpersonal aspects of this issue and also provide some additional ethnographic interest to Oudshoorn’s analysis. The volume and precision of research included in this book is, unfortunately, exactly what might make it impractical to use with most undergraduate classes. However, The Male Pill is a valuable resource for graduate students, researchers, and academics. Nelly Oudshoorn’s work provides social scientists and medical professionals with profound insights into the process by which new medical technology is developed and introduced, despite significant and long-standing cultural odds. I am certain that it will become a template for future research that connects science, culture, and policy. Moreover, The Male Pill is an important case study of contemporary meanings of masculinity and femininity that will prove to be very enlightening to gender scholars.
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Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 2013
The past decades have seen a drastic increase in the medicalization of childbirth, evidenced by i... more The past decades have seen a drastic increase in the medicalization of childbirth, evidenced by increasing Caesarean section rates in many Western countries. In a rare moment of congruence, alternative health-care providers, feminist advocates for women’s health and, most recently, mainstream medical service providers have all expressed serious concerns about the rise in Caesarean section rates and women’s roles in medicalization. These concerns stem from divergent philosophical positions as well as differing assumptions about the causes for increasing medicalization. Drawing on this debate, and using a feminist and governmentality framing of the problem, we interviewed 22 women who have recently had children about their birthing choices, their expectations and their birth experiences. The women’s narratives revealed a disjuncture between their expectations of choosing, planning and achieving as natural a birth as possible, and their lived experiences of births that did not typicall...
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Mothering a Bodied Curriculum
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Books by Claudia Malacrida
Michener began as a training institution, with seemingly benign goals and the intent of providing specialized training with hopes of community reintegration. It quickly grew into a facility that acted as a virulent means of passive eugenics. ‘Trainees’ were inducted into the institution in childhood and often spent their entire lives without hope of re-entry into society, effectively keeping them from ‘contaminating’ the general population. These children and adults lived in social isolation, under extremely horrifying conditions; they were subject to economic exploitation inside the institution and in the community surrounding it, they were heavily and often unnecessarily medicated and made to participate in medical experimentation. Many of them were involuntarily sterilized as part of Alberta’s Eugenics Act, which ended only in 1972.
The story of Michener Center that Malacrida offers is more than a litany of woes. It is also an examination of how Michener Center operated as part of a constellation of official institutions that operated virtually without scrutiny or accountability for much of the 20th century. The Eugenics Board, the Departments of Health and Education, a network of Mental Health Facilities in the province, and Guidance Clinics that were both permanently located in the cities and also offered regular visits to smaller centers, all served to funnel ‘defective’ people into the institutions. By outlining this system and its practices, this book offers a critique of public policy and professional practices that, although fashionable at the time, in retrospect seem nothing short of draconian. Making such a history public offers a cautionary tale to current practitioners and policy-makers in the field of what is euphemistically called ‘human services’ (including policy makers and psychiatric, medical and educational experts who deal with human difference).
The book draws on oral histories from 22 survivors of the institution, archival materials from Michener Center and relevant government sources, and interviews with several ex-workers to flesh out a picture of how social policy without social accountability can go terribly wrong. In so doing, Malacrida constructs a clear argument that facilities like Michener Center have no place in our current ‘services’ for people with intellectual, physical and mental health disabilities.
Readership : An introductory text-reader aimed at second- to fourth- year university students studying courses in Sociology of the Body; Sociology of Heath, Illness, and Well-Being; Body and Society; Social Theory and the Body, Women, Men, and the Body.
"
Malacrida counters current conceptions about mothers of AD(H)D children (namely that mothers irresponsibly push for Ritalin to manage their children's behaviour) as well as professional assumptions of maternal pathology. This thought-provoking examination documents Malacrida's extensive narrative interviews with mothers of affected children in both Canada and the United Kingdom, and details the way in which these women speak of their experiences. Malacrida compares their narratives to national discourses and practices, placing the complex mother-child and mother-professional relations at the centre of her critical inquiry.
Drawing on both poststructural discourse analysis and feminist standpoint theory, Malacrida makes a critical contribution to qualitative methodologies by developing a feminist discursive ethnography of the construction of AD(H)D in two divergent cultures. On a more personal level, she offers readers a moving, nuanced, and satisfying examination of real women and children facing both public and private challenges linked to AD(H)D.
Papers by Claudia Malacrida
Michener began as a training institution, with seemingly benign goals and the intent of providing specialized training with hopes of community reintegration. It quickly grew into a facility that acted as a virulent means of passive eugenics. ‘Trainees’ were inducted into the institution in childhood and often spent their entire lives without hope of re-entry into society, effectively keeping them from ‘contaminating’ the general population. These children and adults lived in social isolation, under extremely horrifying conditions; they were subject to economic exploitation inside the institution and in the community surrounding it, they were heavily and often unnecessarily medicated and made to participate in medical experimentation. Many of them were involuntarily sterilized as part of Alberta’s Eugenics Act, which ended only in 1972.
The story of Michener Center that Malacrida offers is more than a litany of woes. It is also an examination of how Michener Center operated as part of a constellation of official institutions that operated virtually without scrutiny or accountability for much of the 20th century. The Eugenics Board, the Departments of Health and Education, a network of Mental Health Facilities in the province, and Guidance Clinics that were both permanently located in the cities and also offered regular visits to smaller centers, all served to funnel ‘defective’ people into the institutions. By outlining this system and its practices, this book offers a critique of public policy and professional practices that, although fashionable at the time, in retrospect seem nothing short of draconian. Making such a history public offers a cautionary tale to current practitioners and policy-makers in the field of what is euphemistically called ‘human services’ (including policy makers and psychiatric, medical and educational experts who deal with human difference).
The book draws on oral histories from 22 survivors of the institution, archival materials from Michener Center and relevant government sources, and interviews with several ex-workers to flesh out a picture of how social policy without social accountability can go terribly wrong. In so doing, Malacrida constructs a clear argument that facilities like Michener Center have no place in our current ‘services’ for people with intellectual, physical and mental health disabilities.
Readership : An introductory text-reader aimed at second- to fourth- year university students studying courses in Sociology of the Body; Sociology of Heath, Illness, and Well-Being; Body and Society; Social Theory and the Body, Women, Men, and the Body.
"
Malacrida counters current conceptions about mothers of AD(H)D children (namely that mothers irresponsibly push for Ritalin to manage their children's behaviour) as well as professional assumptions of maternal pathology. This thought-provoking examination documents Malacrida's extensive narrative interviews with mothers of affected children in both Canada and the United Kingdom, and details the way in which these women speak of their experiences. Malacrida compares their narratives to national discourses and practices, placing the complex mother-child and mother-professional relations at the centre of her critical inquiry.
Drawing on both poststructural discourse analysis and feminist standpoint theory, Malacrida makes a critical contribution to qualitative methodologies by developing a feminist discursive ethnography of the construction of AD(H)D in two divergent cultures. On a more personal level, she offers readers a moving, nuanced, and satisfying examination of real women and children facing both public and private challenges linked to AD(H)D.
Global Perspectives on ADHD is the first book to examine how this expanding public health concern is diagnosed and treated in 16 different countries. In some countries, readers learn, over 10% of school-aged children and adolescents are diagnosed with ADHD; in others, that figure is less than 1%. Some countries focus on medicating children with ADHD; others emphasize parent intervention or child therapy. Showing how a medical diagnosis varies across contexts and time periods, this book explains how those distinctions shape medical interventions and guidelines, filling a much-needed gap by examining ADHD on an international scale.