Spectrum of Expertise: Parents, Professionals, and ASD diagnosis
A study of the intersection of medicalization processes, contemporary parenting, and expertise formation within ASD diagnosis in young children.
Description
We live in a time of intensive parenting, in which parents are more intensively, emotionally, practically, and financially involved in raising their children than ever before. With new technologies allowing the expansion of connection, constraint, and surveillance, this ‘research-based’ parenting ideology connects more clearly to contemporary neoliberal ideas of self-surveillance, control, and individuality (Shirani et al., 2012). Parents of children who demonstrate developmental or behavioural variation such as ASD are often more ‘intensive’ and involved than other parents as they often work at gaining an abundance of knowledge on ASD diagnosis and category, and practice meticulous participation in the planning and implementation of interventions and care in their child’s case. Parents’ involvement in monitoring, diagnosing, planning, and treating their diagnosed children may depict the effects of ongoing medicalization processes and individuals’ “self-medicalization” (Conrad, 2005, p. 9), with individuals self-monitoring, analyzing, and demanding specific treatment. The global expansion of psychiatric diagnoses in children of disorders such as ASD, ADHD, anxiety, and depression, which is becoming increasingly more common, is another indication of the expansion of the medical jurisdiction. ASD is one of the fastest-growing psychiatric disorders in recent decades (CDC, 2023).
The research project examines the intersection of the ideology of intensive parenting and current medicalization processes in the case of parents of children diagnosed with ASD in the Swedish social-democratic context, characterized by a high degree of public institutions’ involvement in the care of young children, and social and health policies aimed at inclusion and equality. The intersection and its effect on autism diagnosis and expertise are investigated through interviews with parents, professionals, and professional documents focusing on the initial interactions between parents and professional actors in the process of gaining a diagnosis for a specific child, examining questions of expertise and knowledge, parenting and family lives, and professional practices.
Supervisors: Prof. Stefan Sjöström and docent Kristina Engwall.