(see also Singh 2003) and he expresses concern that his son’s personality might be changed through medication: ‘I don’t want to see his person- ality change too much’ (Mick, cited in Davies 2014: 295). This ambiva- lence is a stance identified in several studies (Hansen and Hansen 2006;
Bussing and Gary 2001). Mick’s hesitancy over medication demon- strates a responsibility and level of care for his son as well as a resistance to pathologised narratives of impairment.
Fathers do appear to be far more sceptical of medicalised solutions to ADHD than mothers (see also Potter 2016b; Hansen and Hansen 2006; Singh 2003). Similarly, Potter (2016b) found that fathers of chil- dren with a disability were resistant to professional interpretations and impairment discourse. According to Singh (2003), fathers of children with ADHD can be identified as either ‘reluctant believers’ or ‘tolerant non-believers’ (Singh 2003). In Chapter 4, we saw suggestions of this in mothers’ (partial) non-compliance with medical prescription, for exam- ple in giving medication breaks to their children. Fathers also take up non-compliant positions in relation to dominant medicalised discourses of ADHD. For example, Mick describes how he read information:
just to understand different psychologies…that it isn’t just a hocus pocus bullshit science. (Mick, cited in Davies 2014: 291)
His willingness to be sceptical about circulating information indicates that he is not a passive consumer of professional knowledge, but an interested, and well informed father who is discriminating. His pre- paredness to assume a non-compliant stance makes any subsequent acceptance of medical solutions even more robust and based on rea- soned choice. However, this can be a possible source of tension between parents.
not only demonstrates Alan’s role as protector but it also gives him an entitlement to make evaluations about it based on first-hand experience:
I took J’s medication and… I just… I’m giving this to my son what am I giving him? So I took it…So I took it and I could actually feel my brain slow down […] it was interesting to feel my brain slow. (Alan: cited in Davies 2014: 293)
His anecdote tells us that he does not automatically accept medical authority and might be resistant to it. This kind of account works to resist one of the dominant representations of parents that appear in media reports, that of irresponsible, unscrupulous parents who want to use medication as a quick fix to control their children (see Goldberg 2011; Horton-Salway 2011). While Alan described the experience as
‘interesting’, he was not sure of the value of medication. When asked if the experience was positive, he indicated that this required further thought, ‘uhm’ before repeating the question, ‘was it positive? Uhm’.
Jane, his wife, supplied an answer to this, ‘well I think it helped you rationalise it’ (Jane, cited in Davies 2014: 293). This, Alan seemed to agree to, describing how the medication helped him prioritise tasks.
However, Alan’s display of scepticism and protection towards his child indicates what Singh (2003) calls a potential tension between a father’s authority and medical authority. The act of taking medication can be interpreted as a way of Alan gaining some agency (for himself and for his son) within a process that renders the child and the fam- ily as ‘acted upon rather than acting’ (Renshaw et al. 2014). Certainly, a medical model of ADHD impacts on interventions with children and their families, ‘through narratives of concern, care and specialised treatment’ (Renshaw et al. 2014). As a response to the twin concerns of care and surveillance, Alan’s non-compliance might be seen as an act of defiance to these disciplinary mechanisms that require parents to raise children with ADHD through a prescribed professional lens. Alan’s non- compliance is only partial and based on his own experimentation with the medication. It is Jane (the child’s mother) who supplies a pos- itive evaluation of the effect that medication had on her husband, ‘it helped you rationalise’.
ADHD medication seems to be a contentious topic for some moth- ers and fathers (Singh 2003). For example, Gill and Mick are the par- ents of a boy recently diagnosed with ADHD who, on account of his young age, is yet to be prescribed medication. Gill is an advocate for medication and she provided a very straightforward account of its merits:
the medication is to get the best out of him in terms of his learning abil- ity […] it actually makes his br…you know … think…focus he’ll be focused he’ll be able to retain information […] it means 100% it will impact on his ability to learn. (Gill, cited in Davies 2014: 295)
Her partner, Mick, was more ambivalent. Like Alan, Mick identifies himself as having some of the traits of ADHD, entitling him to speak from experience and raise doubts about the use of medication. Gill’s defence of medication is emphatic and certain, and her language is not tentative, ‘it means 100% it will impact on his ability to learn’. The absence of modality, or tentative language (Woolgar 1988) represents the effects of medication as predictable, routine and, crucially, unprob- lematic. As with Singh’s et al. (2012) concept of the ‘performance niche’, in which academic performance is the main preoccupation, Gill focuses on how medication can improve this. Mick’s concerns are about the effect of medication on his son’s ‘natural’ personality, character, and conduct. In this way, they correspond more to Singh’s et al. (2012) ‘con- duct niche’, which emphasises children’s social behaviour. It may be that due to the association of ADHD with ‘bad’ boys and extreme stereo- types of masculine identities, fathers are more alert to issues of social conduct and social control.
Medication Versus Self-discipline
As with the fathers (of autistic children) in Potter’s study (2016b), Mick indicates that his own characteristics might be constructed as pathologi- cal within the impairment model of ADHD. However, he resists this by focusing on how this has enabled him rather than constrained him. For
example, Mick presents his ‘hyperactive’ behaviours as productive and valuable assets within the workplace:
‘when I’m working there can be a million and one things well not a mil- lion but you know lots and lots of things going on in my mind’ and ‘I sometimes work on four computers at once […] I always do that […] I sometimes I shoot on a chair on wheels whizz across the room to have a look.’ (Mick, cited in Davies 2014: 296)
Hyperactivity, by this account, is an asset within the workplace aligned with speed, multitasking and productivity. Redefining hyperactivity as an asset rather than impairment problematises the issue of medica- tion. Mick, for example, claims he has managed to control potentially unhelpful behaviours through self-discipline, rather than through medi- cation. As he says:
I had to train myself to concentrate on ‘do this’ or ‘do that’ I have to […]
you know back to the main task and is it it’s it’s a what-do-you-call it? a discipline you know and I’ve had to learn it. (Mick: cited in Davies 2014:
296)
Mick‘s self regulation fits very well with neoliberal notions of responsi- bilisation and the ‘good citizen’. The ability to self regulate or self moti- vate are also qualities associated with the culturally valued ideal of the entrepreneur, which have been found to correspond with Bem’s (1981) inventory of culturally expected masculine characteristics (Ahl 2006).
In this account, Mick produces a non-pathological version of his own behaviours, identifying them with his son’s diagnosis (see also Singh 2003) but not explicitly claiming the ADHD label for himself. He sug- gests instead that without self discipline he would be a bit of a ‘scatter- brain’ (p. 296), minimising the significance of this trait. In taking this line, Mick is risking a confrontation with Gill, who has been advocating clear support for medication, but he steers a course between two state- ments weighing the possible benefits of medication against (self) disci- pline as a practical alternative:
if I took, if I had that medication, I would be able to concentrate I would probably benefit from it because I’d be able to concentrate on one thing at once but as it is I have to discipline myself to concentrate’ and ‘but that’s just something to learn you see not, not, you know, not drug induced. (Mick: cited in Davies 2014: 297)
In this account, however, Mick concedes that the effort to implement practices of self discipline is relentless, ‘it almost takes over my life in a way’. For Mick, this has been a successful strategy and is also a way of life for him. This allows him to hold an ambivalent position in rela- tion to medication, acknowledging the possible benefits as well as sug- gesting an alternative working practice. Fathers might acknowledge the biological heritability of their children’s condition, but they also engage with this by promoting ideas of ‘self-formation and self-improvement’
(Frigerio et al. 2013: 593). Mick’s proactive methods of working upon self discipline might be interpreted as a ‘reflexive project of the self’
(Giddens 1991). According to Giddens, there is a cultural imperative for us to assume responsibility for ‘producing’ our identities by work- ing on and disciplining ourselves in order to conform to socially desired norms. The notion of self-improvement in ADHD might in some ways be at odds with the celebration of atypicality that has gained increasing momentum in disability discourse, an issue we return to in Chapter 7.