Striving to remove barriers that prevent us from building Vibrant, Diverse, Inclusive, Accessible Communities!
Steph Sandy, a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy who lives in Coventry, England, has built a full and joyful family life, raising two children with her husband and working as a professional dancer and choreographer, while facing relentless ableism from strangers who openly question whether a disabled person can be a mother. Steph describes people staring whenever she is out with her children and asking how she manages parenting, and the public even questions why her non-disabled husband would be with her, revealing how deeply ableist assumptions about relationships involving People with Disabilities and family lives cut into daily existence.
When Steph sought medical guidance before her pregnancies, her doctor responded not with clinical information but with the dismissive question of how she would look after the baby, a stark example of dominant majority dynamics in which medical professionals treat People with Disabilities as incapable rather than as patients deserving full reproductive support. The discrimination did not stop there: while pregnant and hospitalized with severe morning sickness, Steph was reported without warning to a hospital Referrals and Assessment Unit by staff who had decided on their own that she was unfit to parent, and after her second child was born, a carer repeatedly displaced Steph from her own role by rushing to pick up the baby before she could reach him.
Steph refused to allow these violations to go unchallenged and instead transformed them into a powerful dance work titled "Mother Like No Other," choreographed through her advisory role at the disability charity Sense and its Advisory Arts Group (AAG). The piece shows wheelchair dancers being displaced by non-disabled performers who rush forward to seize the baby, a direct use of creative expression to expose ableist displacement and to put the lived reality of disabled parenting on stage where it cannot be ignored.
Steph devised practical adaptations, including a specialized baby carrier to safely lift her daughter, bottle handles for feeding, and new strategies for transitioning to solid foods, demonstrating that Parents with Disabilities should not be managed by others but need barriers removed so they can parent independently. For Community Builders striving to create Vibrant, Diverse, Inclusive, Accessible Communities, Steph's story is a direct mandate: treating the parenting rights of People with Disabilities as an afterthought is a grave injustice, and building communities where Parents with Disabilities belong equally, free of intrusion, skepticism, or uninvited takeover, is the shared work that remains urgently before us.
Read the Full Article: I'm disabled with two kids - cruel people still ask why my husband's with me.
By: Fran Bowden and Hannah Britt
