A much-cited point by those who study the intersection of gender and disability is that masculinity and disability are in conflict with each other because disability is associated with being dependent and helpless whereas masculinity is associated with being powerful and autonomous, thus creating a lived and embodied dilemma for disabled men. This article maps and critically evaluates the conceptual development of this dilemma of disabled masculinity, tracing how several developments in the fields of disability studies and the critical study of men and masculinities have shaped sociological understandings of disabled masculinity. We suggest that, while social science scholarship has increasingly moved beyond a static understanding and toward a dynamic view of the articulation and interaction between masculinity and disability, there are nevertheless several problems that require attention. The most critical issue conceptually is that the focus of study has been more on masculinity and how it intersects with 'disability' as an almost generic category, rather than on how masculinity (or masculinities) intersect(s) differently with various types of impairment. Thus, though there is quite a bit of research on the dilemma of disabled masculinity for men who acquire a physical impairment post-childhood and for groups of men with diverse impairments studied as if they were a homogenous

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Most studies on the gendered aspects of biographical disruption are predicated on adult experiences of chronic illness, often based on heterogeneous samples. This paper goes beyond typologies by analysing the life‐history case study of ‘Sam’, a 23‐year‐old Australian man raised in a refugee family, who developed a disabling chronic health condition at 15 years of age. The analysis illustrates how critical contextual factors like life‐phase, combine with powerful social structures like ethnicity and gender to shape Sam's experiences of, and responses to, biographical disruption. Even before the onset of any symptoms, Sam was railing against the marginal position he occupied in the Australian gender order as a young Asian man. With little guidance on how to adapt his biography to integrate his new differently functioning body, Sam's transition to adulthood stalls, and he becomes in effect, a boy interrupted.

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Using narrative interviews underpinned by an ecocultural framework, this Australian study investigated the experiences of 39 mothers of children with disabilities and 27 staff members from the early childhood services which these children attended. The data highlight serious limitations of current government policy and provisions in Australia to facilitating the inclusion of children with disabilities into mainstream children's services. The small number of successful inclusions evident in this study appears to be in spite of current government policy and may be attributed more to staff personnel. This article concludes by calling for policy change that actively facilitates the successful inclusion of children with disabilities into generalist early childhood services.

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