Tied to the worldly work of writing: Parent as ethnographer

Abstract

Parent narratives have contributed to ethnographic accounts of the lives of children with autism, but there are fewer examples of parents producing their own autoethnographies. This article explores the affordances of an online blog for enabling a parent of a child with autism to produce a written record of practice which may be considered ‘autoethnographic’. Richardson’s framework for ethnography as Creative Analytic Process (CAP) is applied to extracts from a blog post in order to consider its contribution, reflexivity, aesthetic merit and impact. The article addresses the methodological and ethical implications of reconceptualizing parents as researchers and the potential contribution of new writing platforms to the development of auto/ethnography.