Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Beth noted that teachers in her special school subtly and more often explicitly con-
veyed their expectations of her adult life. Angie, a participant in Campling's (1981)
study,recalledthatwhenshewasfourteenateacherhadintimatedthesocialexpectation
of her nonparticipation in any feminized roles. At the end of a cooking lesson in which
Angie had prepared a salad, the teacher remarked: “What a good job you've made of
that, you would have made someone a good wife” (Campling 1981, 9).
The teacher's turn of phrase that Angie would have made a good wife conveys to the
young teenager that the teacher's expectation is that she will not aspire to or indeed at-
tain the role of a wife, an assumption made upon the basis of Angie's impairment and
consequent supposed inappropriate role.
Normalizing Lack of Space and Place
A number of women made reference to the fact that their parents and close relatives
had never mentioned or discussed the possibility of them marrying or having children.
Kent hassuggested that it isthe subjects that are notspokenabout which shape disabled
women's self-expectations and voice others' expectations of disabled women. Kent has
written of her own experience of the way in which unspoken expectations conveyed a
clear message to her as a young blind woman:
I was seldom encouraged to say: “When I grow up I'll get married and have ba-
bies.” Instead, my intellectual growth was nurtured. I very definitely received
the unspoken message that I would need the independence of a profession, as I
could not count on having the support of a husband. (Kent 1987, 82)
It is noteworthy that in Kent's case there was an expectation that she could be aca-
demically “bright” and could have a career whereas, for many of the women who par-
ticipated in this study neither was considered an option by their families. The “natural”
or “traditional” adult female wife and motherhood roles were perceived as privileged
spaces for disabled women.
Disabled women's active participation as partners, wives, or mothers at the center of
the domestic sphere continues to be regarded as an exception to the rule. Their presence
in the capacity of wife or mother is often regarded as extraordinary (Michalko 2002):
and, put bluntly and using a construction that should now be familiar, they are matter
“out of place” (Creswell 1996; Sibley 1995) in the context of the domestic environment
with an active woman supposedly at its heart.
