Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces of Embodied Knowledge

5. “What Does It Matter?” A Meditation on the Social Positioning of Disability and Motherhood

81 5 “What Does It Matter?” A Meditation on the Social Positioning of Disability and Motherhood S a m a n t h a Wa l s h “ Listen, you don’t want kids anyway, so what does it matter?” There was a conversation-ending silence as these words tumbled out of the mouth of the woman painting my nails on a bright Saturday morning at a local spa.1 We had run out of things to talk about. In an effort to keep the conversation going, I simply brought up the fact that my friend who, like me, has no children at present and still considers herself one, depending on the day—my friend who is young and has not yet started a career—my friend who lacks financial and material resources—is pregnant. She and I share the same inherent sense that we lack the life experience, knowledge, and wisdom to raise a baby, but we differ in our desire to have children in the future. I do not see myself as being a mother because currently mothering is not something I feel compelled to “do.” In bringing up the subject of my friend’s motherhood to the esthetician, I expected that we would whimsically discuss the joy and anxiety experienced in preparing for the birth of the baby. I, being without child, assumed that we would talk about hypothetical baby names, or the experience of raising a child and what I imagined it would (or would not) be like. 1. In the interest of protecting the identity of those involved, the setting and beauty service provided has been changed. 82 • Samantha Walsh Throughout my visit, the woman painting my nails and I did discuss what it would be like for me to raise a child, but not in the sentimental way I had expected. The conversation almost instantly turned into a discussion of how I would manage in “my condition.” I am visibly disabled, receiving my manicure from the comfort and style of my wheelchair. The woman very factually informed me of the mayhem that would ensue should I give birth. She conceded that my mother or some other person would have to take care of a child for me.2 I quickly became agitated at the thought of my disability being a master status that would bar me from motherhood.3 I protested. Her response came in a tone sounding only the alarm of having upset a customer, rather than any concern that she had oversimplified a complex and deeply personal issue. She stated, “There are just some things you can’t handle. Listen, you don’t want kids anyway, so what does it matter?” What does it matter . . . indeed? Although the dialogue was short, what the conversation produced socially was the understanding that disability is not something that should intersect with the experience of motherhood . My relationship to motherhood is framed by my experiences as a young disabled woman, a scholar and activist, and as someone contemplating her own fertility. I find myself caught between the demands of my culture and my interpretation of those demands. It seems as though I must perform the intersectionality between my gender and disability; for example, I feel compelled to have children to prove my capacity and capability as mother. However, I do not currently understand myself as having a profound need or desire to have children. It is this tension between my lived narrative and my sense of obligation to confront the commonsense 2. In saying that my mother or some other person would have to take care of the baby, the esthetician was assuming that I would have to be removed from any role of parenting. She was not suggesting that parenting would be taken up in community with my mother and other people around me. 3. William Hughes coined the term “master status” in 1945. The term is used to describe the phenomenon of one person being understood as completely defined through one social identity (Curra 2000, 26). For further discussion of master status as it relates to disability see Albrecht, Fitzpatrick, and Scrimshaw (2003, 301). “What Does It Matter?” • 83 understanding of the intersectionality of my identity as a disabled woman that unsettles me; it is this tension and the manifestation of it in the conversation above that provides the opportunity to interrogate and reflect on motherhood and disability from my social location...