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Our exploratory study suggests that a balance between autonomy and connection is fundamental to the success of these mother-daughter caregiving relationships. Not only is it important for frail mothers to be responsive to their caregiving daughter's needs, but also it is important for daughters to support the autonomy and independence of their mothers. Our study also highlights the importance of attentiveness in these relationships. Even when mothers, because of illness and frailty, were less capable of attending to their daughters' lives, daughters in connected pairs interacted with their mothers in attentive ways. In constrained pairs, neither intergenerational partner was attentive.

Integrating thought from critical feminist and disability theorists via a strategic social constructionist perspective, the authors analyzed 10 in-depth qualitative interviews to begin to understand the dialogue between (a) how nondisabled sisters understand themselves and their siblings with developmental disabilities and (b) wider systems of power or discourse. The women in this exploratory study described themselves as good sisters by portraying their siblings with disabilities as normal, emphasizing opportunities for moral enhancement, minimizing personal sacrifices, and accepting the gendered nature of family care. This study suggests that nondisabled sisters co-opt ideology that holds women accountable for moral conduct in families to oppose discourse that devalues people with disabilities. This ideology does not, however, help them transcend a gender system that requires mothers and sisters but not fathers and brothers to engage in family care.

ࡗ Studying Postmodern Families: A Feminist Analysis of Ethical Tensions in Work and Family ResearchThrough dialogue and reflexivity, feminist researchers aim to create knowledge that is emergent from people in relationship with one another. Reflexivity is a process whereby researchers place themselves and their practices under scrutiny, acknowledging the ethical dilemmas that permeate the research process and impinge on the creation of knowledge. Guided by these tenets, we analyzed the relations among our research practices, our participants, and ourselves to understand and reduce the ethical tensions we encountered in a multimethod research project designed to investigate work and family processes. Our reflective efforts underscore both the active nature of research participants and the importance of the sociopolitical contexts within and around the research process. We make suggestions for more ethical research.

This study springs from a larger cross-cultural project about mothering a child with a disability in South Korea and in the United States. The present analysis focuses on data collected in South Korea. Integrating critical feminist and disability theories within a social constructionist framework (McGraw & Walker, 2007), we asked (a) how dominant sociocultural systems related to mothering and disability shape South Korean mothers’ understanding of themselves and their children with autism and (b) how mothers conform to and resist these systems. To answer these questions, we conducted in-depth interviews with 14 middle-class, South Korean mothers with children who have autism. We found that mothers resist stigmatizing beliefs about their children by reconstructing the meaning of “normal” childhood and by relying on a network of similarly situated mothers for support. We also found that these mothers conform to traditional beliefs about “good” mothering by adhering to Confucian family values that encourage women to sacrifice themselves to focus on their children’s success. From these findings, we offer implications for practice.