Reconfiguring motherhood an autoethnography of ADHD, care, and knowing in the homeplace
Marshall, Melanie Alese Kirkwood
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132671
Description
Title
Reconfiguring motherhood an autoethnography of ADHD, care, and knowing in the homeplace
Author(s)
Marshall, Melanie Alese Kirkwood
Issue Date
2025-12-04
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Willis, Arlette I
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Willis, Arlette I
Committee Member(s)
Neville, Helen
Toliver, Stephanie
Thompson McMillon, Gwendolyn
Department of Study
Curriculum and Instruction
Discipline
Curriculum and Instruction
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Black motherhood
autoethnography
Black mothers with ADHD
home literacy practices
Abstract
This autoethnographic study examines how receiving an adult diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) transformed the researcher’s understanding of her maternal identity as a Black mother and shifted her literacy practices to support both her and her daughter’s regulation and learning. Guided by Black Feminist Thought and Black Disability Studies, the researcher emphasizes home as a place where acts of Black maternal labor are recognized as forms of literacy. Through recursive narrative writing, these experiences are presented as storied vignettes, highlighting knowledge created through relationships rather than extracted. The stories here appear as fragments of memory, conversation, and lived experience—artifacts created through the cyclical process of writing and re-writing the self in dialogue. Interpretation is conveyed through storied vignettes written in free verse, tracing three phases of change—formation, recognition, and reconfiguration—that show how diagnostic awareness offered both language and legitimacy for longstanding patterns of care and control. Reflections reveal that intergenerational knowledge, spiritual grounding, and narrative reflexivity support maternal adaptation and advocacy, while also exposing the private, often unseen aspects of Black maternal engagement that challenge deficit-focused views of involvement within schools and parent-advocacy models. The study adds to scholarship on Black motherhood, literacy, and neurodivergence by framing maternal self-definition as a dynamic literacy practice—an act of reading, interpreting, and reauthoring oneself in relation to child, community, and system. It ends with a call for pedagogies and research methods that honor Black maternal knowledges and center neurodivergent, relational ways of knowing.
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