Abnormality and Normality

This case study of a highly unusual form of maternity is a valuable addition to the literature on handicapped or deviant children. It is an account of how mothers who took part in a government-sponsored habilitation program in Montreal perceived the process of bearing and rearing (or deciding not to rear) a child with congenital thalidomide-induced deformities. Professor Roskies traces how the biological, psychological, and social factors interacted—and changed over time—as she sought to conceptualize and describe a new way of understanding the elements involved in the mothering of a handicapped child. She raises a number of disturbing questions about our customary ways of viewing this form of mother–child relationship.

Ethel Roskies is Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Montreal, and Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry at McGill University.