UC Davis

While Autism research is interdisciplinary, a review of the research offers a monocultural understanding of how autism impacts family development. Most studies use a homogenous population sample of White middle-class families and/or omit intersectional factors such as race and developmental disability in both the design and analysis of the study. Additionally, while the literature on the effects of parental advocacy on the diagnosis and treatment of children on the autism spectrum does offer a more nuanced perspective of the role and identity of such parents, it does so with the exclusion of race and gender from much of the analyses. The experiences of Black mothers of children with Autism are either absent or presented from a deficit point of view ignoring the long-standing advocacy work from this population. Therefore, if we are to better understand the differences in experiences that produce advocacy development for Black parents of children on the autism spectrum, additional studies are needed. Consequently, using a Critical Race Theoretical (CRT) framework, we conducted critical empirical investigations with the aim to explore and understand the pathway to becoming autism parent advocates for populations with intersectional oppressed identities such as race, gender, and class. The first study conceptualized types of resources (i.e., community cultural wealth) that Black mothers of Autistic children (N=5) used to navigate school systems. Published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education (Morgan & Stahmer, 2021), we found that Black mothers were more likely to use advocacy to navigate special education systems when schools engaged in family-centered practices. The second study explored the variables associated with parent advocacy development in Black mothers (N=7) of children on the autism spectrum across three states: California, Pennsylvania, and New York. Findings include three key phases of development that occur over time for Black mothers to cultivate the advocacy for their children and for families they coach in their communities.