The individualization thesis and mothering children with disabilities

The individualization thesis links the period of late modernity with increases in individual freedom of choice. This paper problematizes this assumption based on the results of in-depth qualitative interviews with 18 mothers of children with disabilities. This research finds that while participants do express a desire for individualism, their lived realities do not reflect the experience of freedom of choice that individualization theorists discuss. While this paper acknowledges that individualization theorists recognize some structural constraint in individuals' lives, it argues that individualization theory, as it is currently conceptualized and implemented in research, imposes an exclusionary framework for examining the experiences of mothers. The level of choice and freedom that mothers of children with disabilities are able to exercise is heavily constrained by factors such as lack of institutional support and imposition of ‘good mother’ theory ultimately rendering the current concept of individualization as peripheral in their lives.