Unruly mothers or unruly practices? : disabled mothers surviving oppressive state practices in Australia

Motherhood is political; being a mother gives a particular place in communities and nations. Feminists have tried to capture its central role within the nation, where the privileging of some forms of motherhood is constructed as maternal citizenship – to delineate the ways in which the state prioritizes those feminized bodies that are relied upon to reproduce the nation (Lake 26). Others, such as Yuval-Davis (27), have critically dis-tilled the ways in which motherhood is central to shoring up the boundaries of the nation state, where the site of motherhood symbolized national collective belonging through the purity of blood and biology that arrives with birth. The history of disabled women who have had their children removed at birth or soon after is less well known. Lewiecki-Wilson and Cellio argue that as both disability and motherhood are liminal states, the blurring of the categories can reveal an abject othering of both identities (7). The stories of disabled mothers are yet to be told and the impact of child removal on both the mothers themselves and their children is yet to be adequately researched. The Australian nation state has long removed the children of disabled women. A current inquiry in the State of Queensland has heard that it is disabled mothers that have been particularly targeted under the state’s child protection regime (Community Living Association). This chapter seeks to set motherhood and disability in Australia within the context of the moral discourse of disabled mothers as ‘unruly’ and the practice of denial of motherhood as consistent with authoritarian neoliberal policies of welfare and motherhood. We will draw upon a recent case study which reveals the continuance of historical legacy of eugenics in policing, controlling and placing under surveillance disabled women’s re-production and mothering.