Raising a child in the autism spectrum: The social class dimension

Abstract

The focus of the present qualitative study is the contextualization of the lived experience of mothers raising one or more children with autism, examining specific aspects, the real socio-economic life circumstances and their role on mothers’ access to resources, their mental health and overall quality of life. The initial main findings generated from the qualitative analysis of the interviews collected from 83 mothers from contrasting/opposite socio-economic positions, working class and economically privileged, are presented across four thematic nodes: a) the type and quality of the diagnostic experience; b) the quality of marriage, the support networks and social responses; c) the motherhood role and coping skills, and; d) the explanatory models for the causation of autism and the experiences from “therapeutic pathways”. The qualitative analysis of the empirical material illustrated that factors directly relevant to the context of this experience, such as social position and access to resources, exert a critical influence on the biographic trajectories of these mothers, their psychological state and their overall quality of life