MALACRIDA, Claudia, COLD COMFORT: Mothers. Professionals, and Attention Deficit Disorder

MALACRIDA, Claudia, COLD COMFORT: Mothers. Professionals, and Attention Deficit Disorder. University of Toronto Press. 2003, 304pp., $27.95 softcover / $55.00 hardcover.Dr. Claudia Malacrida is a member of the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta Canada. Her recent book titles manifest her courage to tackle painful struggles that families face. Her first book entitled. Mourning the Dreams: How Parents Create Meaning from Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Earlv infant Death (1996, Edmonton, Alberta Canada: Qual Institute Press) examines the experiences with professionals of parents who have lost a child. In her latest book, she has once again embarked on a challenging and growing concern, that of Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder [AD(H)D]. entitled Cold Comfort.In the true spirit of sociologists - we study ourselves- Professor Malacrida asks her questions from her own mother's heart. In her prologue, she tells us of struggles with her own daughter's difficulties-not doing well in class, not "connecting" with classmates, needing hours of extra structure and attention to get her school work done, special classes, the teachers' suspicions of parental abuse, the continuing doses of Ritalin. She wonders how other mothers of children with AD(H)D find solace and services. The result is an interview and observational doctoral study of 34 mothers in Canada and Britain.The chapter and section titles of the book are: 1 Why Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder, Why Mothers?: 2 Methodology; 3 British and Canadian Con(text)ual Spaces; 4 Mothers Talk about the Early Years; 5 Ideals and Actualities in Identification and Assessment; 6 Challenges and Conflicts in Treating AD(H)D; 7 Resistance, Risk, and the Chimera of Choice: Conclusion: Epilogue: and six Appendices of research materials.Malacrida interviewed a self-selected sample of 17 mothers in each country whose children were identified as having ADD or ADHD. In Chapter 1, she outlines three main goals of her study: 1 ) to understand how mothers come to terms with the diagnosis and treatment of their children; 2) to examine mothers' compliance with and resistance to "medicalization. psychiatrization, and-normalization of (their] school-age children": and 3) to construct a "feminist discursive ethnography" using "Foucauldian discourse analysis along with feminist standpoint theory" (sic, p. 17). Readers may be fairly satisfied with the sections that address the first and second goals, but not with the third. I will address each of these goals in turn, and then address other technical and substantive issues.Goal 1, Coming to terms with ADD, Diagnosis and Treatment: The book reflects the difficulties in diagnosis and intervention, mothers' frustrations and heartache-but not enough. To what extremes does ADD take these children? Alarming indications of "difference" are only mentioned. Setting another child's hair on fire, killing a puppy during play, late night hospital admissions (p. 155) a suicide attempt (p. 267) as well as the "scenes'" while shopping, in church, and at home give credence to the mothers facing something truly beyond their control. Cryptically, Malacrida tells us that at least one child bore the moniker of "monster" (p. 189).Mothers' ambivalence in accepting professionals' judgments challenges any researcher hoping to learn the onset of ADD (p. 154). Only 5 of the 34 mothers initiated professional interventions with their "different" children. In all the other instances, apparently, the mothers struggled on their own until their children were in a school or a day care setting, where teachers, and doctors began the investigation into the children's problematic behavior. Malacrida's discussion of the inter-professional inconsistencies and battles over the causes or even its "realness" captures the existing confusion over the disturbing phenomenon we call ADD (see Ch. 5).Despite her assertions to the contrary, the picture Malacrida gives us is one of mothers who do not have a firm grasp of their own disciplinary strategies. …