Agency Under Constraint: Everyday Negotiations of Motherhood Among Women With Intellectual Disabilities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Mothers with intellectual disabilities are frequently positioned within deficit-oriented and ableist discourses that question their parenting capacity. While recent scholarship has increasingly foregrounded lived experiences, limited attention has been given to how agency is exercised within relational and hierarchical family contexts, particularly outside high-income Western settings. This study examines how mothers with intellectual disabilities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, negotiate motherhood under conditions of stigma and family regulation. METHODS: A qualitative interpretive design was employed involving in-depth interviews with three mothers with intellectual disabilities in Yogyakarta, complemented by contextual interviews with family members and disability advocates, as well as participant observation. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, drawing on an integrated framework of stigma theory, relational autonomy, everyday resistance and ethics of care. RESULTS: Three themes emerged inductively: negotiating reproductive decisions, negotiating maternal legitimacy and strategic silence and everyday care. The women actively negotiated reproductive decisions, maternal legitimacy and everyday caregiving through strategic timing of pregnancy disclosure, refusal of coerced abortion, insistence on marriage, selective silence and sustained involvement in their children's education and protection-enacting agency within structural constraint. CONCLUSION: These findings challenge independence-based interpretations of parenting capacity and demonstrate how agency and vulnerability coexist. By presenting evidence from a Southeast Asian collectivist context, the study extends existing literature beyond its predominantly Western focus. A relational autonomy perspective provides a culturally grounded framework for understanding parenting among women with intellectual disabilities and has important implications for social work practice.