Moral hierarchies within autism parenting: Making parent-therapists and perpetuating disparities within contemporary China
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Author(s)
Lin, Emily Xi
Date Issued
June 2018
Journal
BioSocieties
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Lin, Emily Xi. "Moral hierarchies within autism parenting: Making parent-therapists and perpetuating disparities within contemporary China." BioSocieties 14, 2 (June 2018): 155–178 © 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Drawing upon 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in China from 2013 to 2014, this article argues that moral hierarchies within autism parenting in fact reproduce local socioeconomic inequalities. In China, medical specialists, special education teachers and prominent parent advocates attempt to manage autism in a context of scarce resources by teaching parents how to serve as their children’s lifelong therapists. Yet, by focusing primarily on parents’ love for their children, while neglecting pragmatic issues related to social–economic disparities, autism advocates fail to understand the difficulties of parents with few socioeconomic resources. I illustrate my arguments by delving deeply into two case studies which illustrate both extremes of the moral hierarchy in autism parenting within China. In ethnographically attending to how parents are made into behavioral therapists and the moral hierarchies within autism parenting in China, this paper describes a culturally specific adoption of ABA. This article argues that scholars and local disability advocates need to pay closer attention to local particularities, including cultural histories of parenting, as well as the complex interactions between disability and social and economic inequalities, so as to better comprehend and address the immediate, existential, and long-range challenges which parents with little social capital face in managing autism.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-018-0123-2
