A family perspective on daily (im)mobilities and gender-disability intersectionality in Sweden

Abstract

Women usually have more complex mobilities than men do, not least if having young children in need of mobility provision. Moreover, travelling can be more challenging if having a disability, and parents of disabled children usually face many constraints in relation to everyday mobility, which implies that mothers of disabled children might experience gender-disability intersectionality in relation to mobility. This paper is based on interviews with mothers with wheelchair-using children living in Sweden and explores intersectionality from a family perspective – gender of the mother and disability of a child. The paper is based on time geography, especially focusing on the competition between time-geographical projects in everyday life. The findings suggest that gender-disability intersectionality affect the mothers’ geographical freedom and can imply both increased mobility and immobility in their lives.

Keywords:

• Disabled children
• gender
• intersectionality
• mobility
• time geography

Introduction

Mobility is important to undertake many daily activities of people, as these tend to be located at different places (Ellegård 2018; Hägerstrand 1970). However, not all have the same chance to be mobile and individuals’ geographical patterns are constrained by various interacting factors (Landby 2019). Previous research has shown that women tend to have more limited mobility opportunities than men (Kwan 2000), especially if having young children (Gil Solá 2013). This could be a result of gendered expectations of parenting, and mothers often being the primary caregivers (Bowlby et al. 2010; Morgan 2011). If having a disabled child, gendered norms can be strengthened (Chiaraluce 2018). Existing research suggests that the whole family’s mobility patterns are affected by disabling barriers to mobility (Giesbrecht et al. 2016; Landby 2019; Nyman, Westin, and Carson 2018; Wiles 2003). Research also shows that disabled children travel more frequently with their mothers than fathers (Falkmer and Gregersen 2002). However, there is a lack of research exploring mobility for mothers with disabled children from a gender-disability perspective.

This paper addresses experiences of everyday mobility among mothers of wheelchair-using children with cerebral palsy (CP) and aims to explore whether their mobilities are subject to gender-disability intersectionality. While the mothers themselves do not have any disabilities, they might be affected by disabling barriers when travelling with their disabled children. The study is based on interviews with 15 mothers living in Sweden. A feminist geography perspective together with a time-geographical framework is applied for analysis, especially focusing on the concept of projects in everyday life.

A main contribution of this paper lies in the focus on how intersections of different social categories (here disability and gender) within the family can act to shape daily mobilities of mothers, instead of focusing on gender-disability intersectionality on an individual level (e.g. Valentine 2007; Lewis Brown and Moloney 2019). The paper also contributes to an understanding of how such intersectionality issues can affect mobilities of mothers living in Sweden. It thereby provides examples from a welfare state with a long tradition of equity and equality work. The Swedish government has a general policy objective of providing equal opportunities to transport mobility for everyone, regardless of gender and disability (Swedish Government 2008).

Throughout the paper the terms ‘disabled people’ and ‘people with disabilities’ are used interchangeably. ‘Disabled people’ risks placing the weight on the disability but indicates that people become disabled due to societal barriers, while ‘people with disabilities’ indicates that a disability is something that a person has, but not necessarily is. However, the latter is more focused on medical than social aspects (Schur, Kruse, and Blanck 2013). The choice to use the terms interchangeably is thus because they both carry both positive and negative features. In line with feminist disability theory, it is important to recognise that disability is not something ‘wrong’ with a person (Garland-Thomson 2005, 2011). Disability is here seen as the result of having an impairment in an inaccessible physical and/or social environment that is not adapted for that impairment (Ytterhus et al. 2015).

Time-geographical projects in families’ everyday lives

According to time geography, people have resources and constraints that affect their possibilities in time-space, for instance regarding what activities and projects they can undertake (Hägerstrand 1970). Various projects take time and compete as people cannot physically be at more than one place at a given point in time (Ellegård and Svedin 2012), limiting possibilities to undertake several projects simultaneously (Kwan 2000; Lenntorp 2004). Time-geographical projects can be divided into individual and organisational projects, where individual projects are undertaken to reach an individual’s own goals, whereas organisational goals are steered on a higher level and include several individuals. Organisational projects can occur at a workplace, but also more informally, for instance in a family (Ellegård 2001, 2018). Family members have different individual projects which need to be planned in relation to each other, which can require some negotiations due to limited resources and competition between the various projects. Some projects need to step back if others are to be realised. Gender can affect which projects that are prioritised, as it is usually mothers who steer family projects and support children’s individual projects. Thereby, mothers usually have less time available for realising their own individual projects, compared to fathers (Ellegård 2001, 2018).

Some projects are fixed in time-space. These are usually organisational level, where the control over the time-geographical location of the project is steered by others and not easily changed by individuals. Fixed projects include, for instance, (pre)school, work, and scheduled leisure activities. Individuals who have many fixed projects have limited flexibility to undertake other projects and are also affected by a limited geographical reach, as they need to be able to spatially move between various projects within a given timeframe (Kwan 2000). Mothers usually have more fixed projects than men do, as they often are the ones involved in both their own projects and non-employment activities related to the household and the children’s fixed activities, such as school and organised after-school activities (Kwan 1999; Schwanen 2007). Mothers’ time-use, including daily mobilities, is often highly interconnected to the children, especially when the children are young (von Benzon 2021).

In this paper, mobility provision is seen as one of the projects that the interviewed mothers perform as family projects, to fulfil the activities needed for the realisation of the children’s individual projects. The mothers’ own mobility and projects such as work are considered their own individual projects.

Feminist disability studies and intersectionality

During the past years, there has been a growing interest in feminist research to study how women are affected by gender and other connecting attributes and social identities, such as ethnicity, sexuality, race, disability, etc; leading to further complexity in everyday life (Valentine 2007). ‘Feminist disability studies’ concern similarities between feminist studies and (the more recent field of) disability studies; for instance, related to discrimination that arises from differing from the societal norm (male, non-disabled individuals), for whom societies (not least public environments) often are planned (Hall 2011; Garland-Thomson 2011). Within feminist disability studies, disability is – like gender – considered a social category of analysis where many within-group differences do exist (Garland-Thomson 2005).

Research in feminist disability studies also deals with intersectionality. Crenshaw (1991) coined the term intersectionality to focus on how race and gender interact to create multiple dimensions of disadvantage. In more recent intersectionality studies, there has been a growing interest in intersections between disability and gender (Garland-Thomson 2005; Maroto, Pettinicchio, and Patterson 2019). For instance, there is research showing that disabled women generally are more disadvantaged compared to men with disabilities (Moodley and Graham 2015; Thomas 2006), but also problematising masculinity and disability (Paccaud and Marcellini 2022). In intersectionality studies, social identities like gender and disability should not be seen as single axes of disadvantage that simply can be added to each other. Instead, it is important to recognise how various social identities interact in creating and reinforcing inequalities and power relations (Hopkins 2019). Individuals are affected by the interconnections and interdependence connected to social categories (Valentine 2007), leading to ‘webs of disadvantage and exclusion’ (Thomas 2006, 179), where belonging to one social category can affect the experience of another (Shields 2008).

Intersectionality is complex, as different aspects in life sometimes interacts, but not necessarily always, and such interactions can be either advantageous or disadvantageous for individuals, depending on situation (Collins 2015; Giesbrecht et al. 2016; Hirschmann 2012). Intersectionality is thus context dependent, and Valentine (2007) argues that geography is important in how intersectionality is formed and experienced, not least regarding the built environment and power relations at different places as intersectionality occurs in interactions (see also Giesbrecht et al. 2016; Hopkins 2018; Sircar 2022). Due to this context dependence and social identities being connected to form individuals’ experiences in certain situations, but not always, it can be difficult to study intersectionality in disability research. Research tends to focus on a few aspects or identities and how they interact in a specific context, rather than elucidating the whole complexity of individuals’ everyday lives (Valentine 2007; Lewis Brown and Moloney 2019). If including several different social categories, it can be seen how these interact to form various levels of disadvantage but challenging to get a deeper understanding of how these affect individuals and in which situations (see Maroto, Pettinicchio, and Patterson 2019). A possible solution could be to focus on aspects that are likely to be more important than others in certain contexts, but to keep in mind that other factors and aspects of life also shape individuals’ lived experiences (Giesbrecht et al. 2016; Hopkins 2018; Valentine 2007).

In this paper, intersectionality is used as a perspective to guide the understanding and analysis of the interviews (see also Collins 2015). However, it is not only seen as a research tool, but as something that affects all individuals in different ways, it is recognised that this paper cannot include all aspects of intersectionality that mothers of wheelchair-using children are facing in everyday life and through their life courses. I focus only on gender-disability intersectionality to explore if mothers of wheelchair-using children have mobilities affected by their own gender and children’s disabilities. The delimitation of focusing only on gender and disability means that important aspects that can contribute to the complexity of the women’s lives could be missed out. Moreover, gender-disability intersectionality is limited to focus on everyday mobility, especially the interconnections between gendered mobility, gendered parental norms, and mobility constraints related to their children’s disability, while excluding other parts of everyday life. Even though all individuals are different, these women are likely to face some similar challenges with daily travel in their roles as mothers of wheelchair-using children.

Gender and disability in daily mobility projects

Mobility has increased globally, leading to assumptions of high mobility, which widens the gap between the mobile and the immobile (Delbosc and Currie 2011; Lucas 2012). Many studies within feminist geography have focused on women’s mobilities, showing that they usually have more constrained mobilities than men do (Hjorthol 2001; Kwan 2000; Scholten, Friberg, and Sandén 2012). Women usually travel shorter distances and travel more with public transport than men, whereas men have a longer commute and often travel by car (Transport Analysis 2019). Women, and especially mothers, also have more complex mobility patterns compared to men, for instance combining several different activities in one trip and making more child-related trips (Hjorthol 2008; Schwanen 2007). Child-related trips have increased lately as parents increasingly chauffeur their children to school and leisure activities, while children’s active and independent forms of travel have decreased (Waygood et al. 2017). Gendered mobility patterns could be further complicated as transport planning often favours men’s car travel to work, rather than the complex mobilities of women (Hanson 2010). In Sweden, there has been a slow convergence of men’s and women’s mobilities during the past decades, but gender differences still exist (Transport Analysis 2019).

Research on mobility for people with disabilities have shown that they generally travel less than non-disabled people do and experience many constraints in relation to daily mobility (e.g. Taylor and Józefowicz 2012; Velho et al. 2016). One major challenge, not least for wheelchair-users, is using public transport, which often is deemed too inaccessible, making many wheelchair-users car dependent (Bromley, Matthews, and Thomas 2007; Pyer and Tucker 2017; Wheeler, Yang, and Xiang 2009). When it is a child who has a disability, parents are often needed to provide mobility for them, not least as they often need adapted cars, which makes it difficult to travel with others. Parents of wheelchair-using children thus usually have chauffeuring responsibilities exceeding those of parents with non-disabled children (Pyer and Tucker 2017). Moreover, even though parents in general are chauffeuring their children up to a higher age than previously, non-disabled children usually travel more independently the older they get (Fyhri and Hjorthol 2009). Pyer and Tucker (2017) shows that disabled children tend to be reliant on their parents for mobility also as teenagers and Deka (2014) suggests that this reliance can continue into adulthood. When parents are accompanying disabled children, they can be affected by disabling barriers that their children encounter (Morrison et al. 2022).

The availability of formal and informal care systems can be important in how various family members are affected by disabling social and environmental barriers (Wilton and Horton 2020). In many countries, caring for a disabled family member is a matter of informal activities within the family and it is often women who take on the role as carers (Scott 2010; Wiles 2003). This occurs, even though men increasingly have participated in informal caregiving practices, at least in situations with ill spouses or relatives (Giesbrecht et al. 2016). In North America, it is often very expensive to employ an external carer and when it is a child who is disabled, it can be cheaper for parents to quit working and care for their children instead (Paccaud and Marcellini 2022; Scott 2010). It is most often the mothers who are leaving paid employment to become caregivers, partly because of gendered wage differences that makes it more economically stable compared to if the father would quit working (Scott 2010). Nonetheless, this takes place also because of gendered norms of parenting where mothers are the ones expected to take care of their children (von Benzon 2021).

In Sweden, there are support systems aiming to ease everyday life for families with disabled children, which includes state funded personal assistance (Miettinen, Engwall, and Teittinen 2013). There are also support specifically for mobility. Special transport service (STS), such as adapted taxis, is a substitute for public transport when it is deemed too inaccessible (Falkmer and Gregersen 2002). It is often a combination of personal assistance and STS that is used, providing possibilities for disabled children to have mobilities independent of their parents (Landby 2019). The Swedish system thus provides another social environment than much of the existing research in the field (e.g. Giesbrecht et al. 2016; Wiles 2003). Thereby, this paper contributes to an understanding of how gender-disability intersectionality is experienced in mothers’ daily mobilities in a socio-geographical context where formal care is common and where there is a political ambition that families with disabled children can have everyday lives like those with non-disabled children.

Method

This paper is based on interviews with 15 mothers who all have wheelchair-using children with cerebral palsy (CP) and live in Sweden. The decision to use interviews was based on the aim to explore these women’s experiences of everyday mobility, which requires a qualitative approach (Brinkmann and Kvale 2018). Quantitative methods are generally difficult to use when studying intersectionality. With quantitative methods, different social identities can be added to each other (Lewis Brown and Moloney 2019; Maroto, Pettinicchio, and Patterson 2019); for instance to show statistically if mothers of disabled children have other mobility patterns than other mothers do. However, such methods cannot show the complex interdependence between the different social categories, nor how intersectionality is experienced (Shields 2008). It can also be difficult to capture the effect of social and environmental barriers, which play an important role in how disability is played out (Lewis Brown and Moloney 2019). Moreover, as intersectionality is context dependent, a deeper understanding of how intersectionality affects individuals in different situations, and what social categories that are disadvantageous at certain times requires more reflective methods (Sircar 2022). Hopkins (2018) suggests that open, exploratory, and participatory research approaches are to be preferred when studying intersectionality.

For this study, the interview questions were open-ended and formulated so that the women could freely share their experiences while I as a researcher could take on the role as an active listener (Edwards and Holland 2013). I considered this important as I do not have any lived experience of having wheelchair-using children. My personal connection to this research topic comes from previously working as a personal assistant to children with multiple disabilities. Thereby, I have experienced some issues related to mobility, but I do have a lot to learn from these parents who are engaged in such mobilities daily.

The interview questions were tested in a pilot interview with a mother of a wheelchair-using child and approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (nr: 2017/332-31) before the respondents were recruited. The parents were recruited through Facebook groups for parents with disabled children, where I posted an information letter detailing the aim, method, and planned distribution of the study. I clarified that it was voluntary to participate, and that the data would be handled confidentially. The initial sample consisted of 18 parents, whereof 15 were mothers and three were fathers.

The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis, which is an analysis method where transcribed data is sorted into codes based on various themes. Some themes can be pre-decided, while others can emerge throughout the coding process (see Braun and Clarke 2006). In this case, the pre-decided themes related to travel constraints and adaptation strategies, whereas gender emerged as an important theme. This led to the choice of going deeper into the experiences of the 15 mothers interviewed and focusing on the combination of being a woman and having a wheelchair-using child. The interviews were held in Swedish (except for the interview with Linda, which was held in English as she originates from a non-Swedish country), and the quotes included in the text are thus translated to English. All names have been replaced with fictional names.

The interviewed mothers live in different parts of Sweden, ranging from North to South, and rural to metropolitan areas, and have children with an age range of 2.5-15 years old. Only two of the children were girls, which could be explained by the fact that more boys than girls are born with CP (Chounti et al. 2013). Some mothers had more children than the wheelchair-using child and all mothers had male partners. All families can be considered middle-class and none mentioned financial issues as a constraint to daily mobility.

Gender-disability intersectionality in mothers’ daily mobilities

This section presents the findings of the study, including some analysing notes in the end of each sub-section. The section first presents daily travel constraints, followed by a sub-section on changed (im)mobilities of the mothers. The final sub-section shows how projects like mobility provision for children are competing with other projects in their daily lives.

Experiences of travel constraints

Everyday mobility might not be considered a ‘project’ by some, but rather a means to undertake other projects. However, if having many travel constraints that make travelling difficult, the trip can feel like a project, which was a common experience among the interviewed parents. Due to barriers experienced with public transport (e.g. lack of available space for wheelchairs, difficulties carrying different aids and equipment that the children needed, and uncertainty regarding the accessibility of transport modes), all interviewed mothers used cars for everyday mobility with their disabled children, either their family car or special transport service (STS). The supply of public transport alternatives is better in urban and metropolitan areas than rural areas. However, there was no differences in transport mode choice depending on place of living among these families. The interviews also revealed that the mothers feel restricted to use the car instead of public transport even when travelling alone, due to need for flexibility and possibility to be on ‘stand-by’ for their children. Linda has a 5-year-old son and lives in a metropolitan area:

Linda: I wouldn’t need a car, because I live right in the middle of the city. Everything is accessible to us with public transportation and… car would not have been an option. I mean now it’s a must for us. If my son didn’t have a disability I wouldn’t even have to drive/…/, then public transportation would be what I would depend on.

Moreover, while travelling by car was the most sufficient alternative for daily mobility with the wheelchair-using child, it was not trouble-free. One reason to why travelling itself could be considered a project was that it required a lot of planning and was experienced as time-consuming. Sofia, who has a 7-year-old disabled son, said:

Sofia: You have to be a step ahead all the time, which can lead to fewer trips because it’s so… complicated to go, just because you have a child with disability.

Similarly, Tina, a mother of a 13-year-old wheelchair-using girl said:

Tina: It takes longer just to get out and into the car, and then the same procedure once you arrive. So, of course, it means we are less spontaneous. We stay more at home.

Hanna, a mother with a 2.5-year-old wheelchair-using son described how it took about 20 min to get the wheelchair-using child ready to go, and then several minutes to help him in och out of the car at every stop they had to make. She was asked how she dealt with combination trips, which included several stops along the way:

Hanna: I do those kinds of trips almost every day. I go to pick up children at school and then collect a parcel, go grocery shopping or something, and then I always try to pick up one of the kids first, one of the older kids, who can sit in the car when I hurry with grocery shopping so that I don’t have to… it sounds awful, but so I don’t have to bring (disabled son) into the supermarket, because it’s a whole project, you know./…/When you have to get him in and out of the car three-four times within an hour… it takes time and it’s heavy.

In addition to the time-consuming activities of helping the wheelchair-using children in and out of the car, many mothers also experienced it heavy to lift both the child, the wheelchair and other equipment into the car, which resulted in some mothers choosing to leave the wheelchair-using child at home when travelling for projects not directly related to the child, such as grocery shopping. However, some children had to follow on trips related to the mothers’ projects, if there was no one else, such as another parent or a personal assistant, available to take care of the child.

While children’s and mothers’ mobilities generally become more independent of each other as the children grow older (von Benzon 2021), the mobility constraints for the mothers in this study did not seem to be affected by children’s age. The mothers included in the study had children of various age, but no clear difference could be found in mobility patterns of those with younger and older children. The older children in the study seemed to need as much parental support as the younger ones.

The findings presented here thus show that while public transport in general is more common among women than among men (Transport Analysis 2019), it was not an option in these women’s everyday lives, regardless of place of living. When travelling with the children, the mothers are affected by barriers for wheelchair-users, such as inaccessible public transport. They are thus more car dependent than they would have been if not facing these disabling barriers. While car travel generally is more flexible than public transport, the mothers could not fully enjoy this flexibility for their own mobility, as their mobilities generally were highly connected to the children, whereas their own geographical freedom was quite limited. It thus seems like they switched one form of gendered mobility (i.e. travelling with public transport) to another (i.e. increase in child-related trips) – the mothers’ mobilities are gendered because of gendered expectations on parenting (e.g. Kwan 2000; Scholten, Friberg, and Sandén 2012). Gender-disability intersectionality comes into effect when the mothers are expected to provide mobility for their children but are limited by disabling barriers related to various transport modes.

Increased mobility and immobility?

The children had many individual and organisational projects, to which they needed transportation. Many mothers reported how they had to travel more often and for longer distances in everyday life since they got the disabled child. As a result of accessibility requirements and other adaptations that the children needed, they could usually not go to the closest (pre)school, regardless of if they lived in a rural or urban area. This was exemplified by Kristin, who lives in a suburb and must drive 15 kilometres to take her son to school, drive him to after-school activities, or take him to appointments with doctors and physiotherapists in the city centre. These trips were scattered geographically and throughout the day, meaning that she spent a lot of her time on mobility provision. She was asked if she thought her everyday mobility would be different if her son did not have a disability:

Kristin: Yes, I’m sure. Partly because… well, he would have gone to school here, where we live. Then we wouldn’t have to take the car, instead taking the bike. That we would do… and maybe not yet, since he’s nine, but soon he would have been able to take the bike to school by himself. And also, he wouldn’t have all these hospital visits… and he would probably have other leisure activities. Maybe he would practice soccer here instead of having to go to the city for adapted horseback riding.

While ‘mandatory’ trips to fixed activities and projects in everyday life increased, trips for leisure had generally decreased. Maria, a mother of a 15-year-old boy, explained that her son could not hang out with friends as her other two children did, due to his disability. Either she had to take him somewhere or he would just stay at home. As for (pre)schools, leisure activities for wheelchair-using children also tend to be centralised, meaning that children need someone to chauffeur them there. Sara has a 6-year-old wheelchair-using son and lives in a metropolitan area with many activities for non-disabled children close-by, but she must drive her son quite far so that he can participate in adapted activities:

Sara: (If he did not have a disability) I think we would have travelled less by car, because then we could have chosen leisure activities closer to us. Almost every neighbourhood has soccer practice, ice hockey, horseback riding and so on pretty close. If you are to do disability sports, you have to, at least here, go to (the other side of the city), which is so much further. Otherwise, we could have taken the bike or walked.

Sara also expressed that she would like to take more advantage of the different activities that the big city offers, such as going to an amusement park, visit museums and different events, etc., but that travel-related constraints inhibit her from doing so. As they need lots of equipment, she feels forced to take the car, but difficulties with finding parking can make them avoid such trips.

Having many time-consuming child-related trips to various activities and projects indicates that there is a decreased amount of time available for other activities in daily life, due to the limited time budget a day provides (Ellegård 2018; Hägerstrand 1970). Since many of the children’s projects are fixed in time-space (see also Kwan 2000), there also seems to be little room for negotiations and the children’s projects are highly prioritised. This finding shows that while daily mobility had increased for many families, the increased mobility is highly connected to fixed activities. Therefore, an increased daily mobility in these mothers’ lives does not necessarily give these mothers an increased geographical reach and mobility freedom, but rather the opposite as their mobilities is connected to the children, and not for their own realisation of individual projects. These mothers could thus be considered mobile as they are having many trips in daily life, but at the same time they could feel immobile due to various travel constraints which limit their mobility for realising individual projects related to leisure and pleasure. This is an example of how disability of a child (and disabling structures leading to longer trips in daily life) can intersect with gendered norms of childcare to affect the mothers’ (im)mobilities.

Negotiating competing projects

Based on the interviews, these families have some competing projects in everyday life. Commonly, the most prioritised project, especially among mothers, was taking care of the disabled child, including mobility provision for the child’s projects. This project was often in competition with the mother’s work situation, including both if she worked, how much she worked, and where she worked. The fathers work situation did not occur as affected, as most of them still worked full-time, or at least had more work hours than the mother in the family.

One example of how the care responsibilities can affect mothers’ work is Hanna who quit work and has been staying at home with her disabled son since he was born. They live in a suburb, and she was previously working and commuting (about 45 min) to work even if they have five other children in the family. The father works more than full-time and commutes to work. Hanna is planning to start working again when her disabled child reaches school age but will most likely change workplace to minimise the commute so that she can be closer to her son in case he needs her. Moreover, she plans to step down from her previous full-time work to a part-time employment:

Hanna: I have been thinking a lot and I think that if I’m going to step down to 50%, I can’t continue in (city of previous workplace). I will try finding something closer. But I have pretty good job… but only working 50% and having to drive that many miles a day…

For some mothers in this study, certain projects were more negotiable than for others. If the families had access to formal care like personal assistance and special transport service (STS), some of the children’s daily projects could be performed without parental support, thereby opening more space for the mothers to have their own mobility and realising their own projects. Some mothers were able to work full-time and said these support systems helped them to just take on the role as a ‘regular mum’ and not a caretaker. For instance, Lisa, a mother of a 11-year-old wheelchair-using boy, uses the family car for leisure trips where the whole family is involved but almost never drives her son to school, as he travels there with his personal assistant, using STS. In their daily life, STS works for routinized trips, such as going back and forth to school every day, but not spontaneous leisure trips due to inflexibility in planning with the STS.

Likewise, Nina’s 10-year-old son uses STS to school, and he has full-time assistance, meaning that she does not have to drive him. However, sometimes the STS does not show up, even for routinized trips like school trips, and then Nina takes him there. Sometimes Nina must step in as an assistant for her son, for instance when his personal assistant is sick, but usually it does not affect her possibilities to work. It rather limits leisure time, which she finds problematic as there are two other children in the family whose leisure activities, she cannot be engaged in. Anna, a mother of an 11-year-old girl, explains how she is very satisfied with the external support from society, which allows both her and her husband to work. They live in a peripheral area quite a few kilometres outside a city and both the girl’s school and the parents’ workplaces are in the city, but it is the personal assistants that takes the daughter to school and leisure activities:

Anna: (My daughter) uses STS every day back and forth to school. It works great!/…/I rarely take the STS with her. The assistants travel with her both back and forth to school and to medical appointments and so on. And it is the assistants who order the STS at other times when they are about to do something as they prefer to go by STS. They also have access to our car.

An example that stands out among the interviewed mothers regarding employment and childcare responsibilities is Sara. Her son was recently approved personal assistance, but they had troubles finding assistants, so Sara currently takes care of her son by herself during weekdays. The father is going to a university in another city and commutes on a weekly basis. Yet, Sara manages a full-time employment and studies part-time for one semester. Her work and studies are quite flexible in time, meaning that she can partly adapt her schedule to the needs of her son. Moreover, her son’s school is located quite close to home, about 2.5 kilometres, and she can drop him off on her way to work without having to do time-consuming detours. Being able to effectively combine different projects seems to be not only a matter of access to external support, but also flexibility in one’s working hours and, to some extent, the geographical location where the family lives. Having only 2.5 kilometres to an adapted school implies less time-space constraints compared to families who must travel longer distances, meaning that more time is available for her own activities and projects. However, that seems to be a matter of social and spatial planning steered by authority decisions rather than something that these families could easily change.

The examples here show that when competition between children’s and mothers’ daily projects exist, the children’s projects are prioritised. However, the fathers are still engaged in their work projects, suggesting that the mothers are the one adjusting their everyday lives the most to provide support for their disabled children, perhaps due to gendered norms of work and family life (e.g. von Benzon 2021). This thus shows how the gender of the mother and disability of the child can intersect in the organising of families’ daily lives, including what activities and projects that are being undertaken. However, the findings also exemplify how the combination of personal assistance and STS can provide opportunities for both the child and the other family members to have mobilities independent of each other and decrease the competition between different family members’ projects, thereby decreasing some gendered care responsibility constraints, and, in turn, decreasing the impact of gender-disability intersectionality.

Concluding reflections

This paper contributes to existing intersectionality research within feminist geography and feminist disability studies by showing that also non-disabled women’s daily mobilities can be affected by gender-disability intersectionality if they have a disabled child to whom they adapt everyday life, thereby exemplifying how intersectionality can exist due to family characteristics, rather than only individual ones. In this study, the mothers’ mobilities seem highly affected by gender-disability intersectionality. Their mobilities are gendered due to gendered expectations on parenting and mobility provision, and their mobility freedom is limited as they are highly connected to the disabled child, thereby facing disabling barriers such as inaccessible modes of transport and centralisation policies. Due to the centralisation of the children’s organisational projects, the daily geographical space for the children is larger than it could have been if society was better planned to accommodate their needs. As main mobility providers, the mothers’ everyday space can also increase even if their own mobility freedom is very limited. The mothers thus seem to be affected by both increased mobility and immobility due to gender-disability intersectionality in daily travel.

Interestingly, the solution most used to open for more mobility possibilities for the mothers in this study was to rely more on external support, like personal assistance and STS, rather than fathers sharing the project of providing mobility for their children. This study indicates that the fathers’ individual and organisational projects, as well as their everyday spaces, seem to be less affected than the mothers by having a disabled child, but there is a need for future studies to include the perspectives and experiences of fathers as well. Other parts of their daily lives than work, such as leisure activities, might be more affected and are uncaptured in this paper.

One aspect that could be expected to differ among these women and their mobilities was place of residence. As seen by Valentine (2007), geographical space can be an important factor in how intersectionality is experienced, but no clear differences were found depending on place of living, as the mothers’ mobilities were affected by centralisation of either (pre)schools, leisure activities or both in everyday life, regardless of if they were living in rural or metropolitan areas. A larger sample might capture geographical differences within the country. However, geographical differences in how gender-disability intersectionality is experienced are likely clearer on other geographical levels, for instance if comparing countries. Studies in other geographical areas, without the Swedish welfare system in place, could probably show different results. Here, where caring for disabled children is a matter of both formal and informal care, the families have more options to overcome both gendered lock-ins and disability constraints, compared to countries where mothers are the natural caregivers due to economic or socio-cultural reasons (Scott 2010; von Benzon 2021). Further research is needed to study how mobilities are affected by gender-disability intersectionality in countries where traditional gender norms are even stronger and caring for a disabled child is a more informal matter.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the parents who participated in this study and candidly shared their experiences of daily mobilities. I am also thankful for the useful comments and feedback I received from the anonymous reviewers and editors, Kanchana N Ruwanpura and Lena Grip, of Gender, Place and Culture.

Disclosure statement

The author declares no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Transport Administration (Grant number: DNR TRV 2017/19063) and the Umeå University programme ‘Mobility, Transformation and Regional Growth’ (Grant number: UMU-300-2054-12).

Notes on contributors

Emma Landby

Emma Landby is a PhD candidate in human geography whose main research interest is mobility for families with disabled children, including both everyday mobility and tourism mobility.