Mothers' experiences and interactions with professionals when caring for children in early intervention in Taiwan

Mothers in Taiwan, a predominantly Chinese society, are expected to give birth to and care for children who will carry on the patriarchal family line. Mothers whose children are diagnosed as having developmental delays or other medical conditions that warrant early intervention, must enter worlds they have not previously encountered and take on unanticipated roles. Taking the perspectives of symbolic interactionism and utilizing a phenomenological research method, the researcher interviewed 17 mothers of children in early intervention in northern Taiwan to understand how they made sense of their interactions with the early intervention system and its professionals and how they learned to reconceptualize themselves as mothers in the early intervention worlds.;Mothers in this underwent roughly four stages of the early intervention process to become mothers of children in early intervention. These four stages, finding diagnoses, reaching for professionals, securing services, and settling in the early intervention world corresponded to a learning process of resisting new names, relying on professionals, learning the system, and becoming expert mothers. This four-stage early intervention process was the product of a medical model-based early intervention service system aggressively promoted by the government and reflected Taiwan's historical, social, and cultural contexts. Through the early intervention system, mothers interacted with numerous early intervention professionals and learned how to survive and thrive in the "hidden corner" of the early intervention world. Expert mothers also crossed the border and bridged the marginalized with the visible mainstream worlds by sharing their experiences with other mothers and speaking for their children and themselves.;Drawing from the data, past studies of mother-professional relationships, and indigenous sociological theories, this study questions the feminist perspectives of women and care work, calls attention to the systemic factors that facilitated women's care giving efforts in Taiwan's early intervention system, reexamines mother-child relationships, and proposes recommendations for practitioners, researchers, and policy makers who are involved in early intervention in Taiwan.