Unmasking stigma: Types of stigma

This fact sheet is part of a series we created with families who have been through tough times to spark hope and new ideas about how to recognise and respond to stigma.

We hope these resources have something to offer all families, but recognise they are simply a snapshot reflecting the lived experiences of the families who helped us create them – other families will have different experiences and stories.

We also intentionally create resources that reflect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing with guidance from our National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Consultancy Group and partners.

See more about how Emerging Minds collaborates with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners, families and Community.

Emerging Minds acknowledges that families come in many forms. In our resources, the term ‘parent’ encompasses biological, adoptive, foster and kinship carers as well as individuals who have chosen to take up primary or shared responsibility in raising children. Our resources aim to support families and the children in their care. We acknowledge that every child is unique and has different strengths, vulnerabilities and experiences that shape their health and development.

‘People assume that we (my foster parent and I) are mother and daughter. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and the terms “mum” and “dad” being everywhere all the time, can be very tricky and mean lots of fake smiles and lies.’

– A child in foster care

‘I have a service dog that comes around with me, so automatically there’s a visual to me not being normal, and I automatically get shoved into a box before they’ve even talked to me. I often get people touching me without my consent because they think I’m blind, or people just immediately thinking that they can ask what my disabilities are … things like that. It’s really frustrating. I get asked the same question 500 times a day, so stop asking me!’

– KC, young person from a rural area

‘Poverty is very isolating as a parent. Because you can’t really open up to the people who are in your life, which is often your children, because you wanna keep it from them. But you also find it hard to open up to friends because there was that whole stigma of being a parent. You have to be able to provide for your children and if you are living in poverty, then people see you as a bad parent.’

‘When the children and I were homeless, the longer we stayed homeless the more stigmatised we became. Because we were living in the car and a tent and driving to different towns to try and find a place to live, we didn’t have access to regular showers and the kids started to become a bit over the top in their behaviour. So we looked like this unshowered, unruly family, and me as a single mum on government benefits as well.

‘I had fudged my rental history to try and hide the homelessness but I would walk into a rental, the person would literally look me up and down, sometimes openly staring, and say, “Sorry there’s nothing available”, but on the website there would be lots, so I knew it wasn’t true. This was before housing became so rare and we should have been able to get a rental easily.’

‘We joined a parents group when we first moved down to Tasmania. We didn’t know anyone and we just had a little six-month-old baby.

‘Two years later we had the twins and then we discovered the twins had Autism. And we were talking about that with the other mothers and suddenly we started getting ostracised and it was like, “What’s going on?” The other parents started to distance themselves from us. And eventually we stopped going to the group because they weren’t engaging with us.

‘That really impacted us as parents because that is people going, “There’s something wrong with your kids and we don’t want them near our kids.” It was really hurtful for our kids because they lost all that connection that we had built up with those families. We felt really bad as parents because we thought we’d failed somehow.’

‘I remember when one of my children was quite young, still an infant, and we were in a really difficult situation and very isolated, I couldn’t keep the house warm as we couldn’t afford it. And she ended up getting quite sick with bronchiolitis.

‘So I took her to the hospital. I’m trying to express how urgent I knew this situation was. I could tell the doctor placed me as just a poor, anxious mother. And we got sent home.

‘I was incredibly lucky that somebody in my life was a trained nurse and she saw my daughter and she said, “You need to get into the hospital now”. And on the way to hospital, her lips started turning blue. She could have died. I was poor and I looked poor, but I also have autism and come across as “different” in many situations. So stigma acted in my disabilities too.’

‘People assuming because you come from a family where your parents are substance abusers, means that you automatically must be or that you have been sent in [to hospital or doctor] to get stuff for ’em. When in reality you have a fracture and pain and you actually need help, and them just associating you by a last thing or the fact that they’ve seen you with someone and deciding you are exactly the same as that.’

– Harley, young person from a rural area

‘When I walked into a police station in a PTSD response over a recent action my violent ex had taken, the officer thought he already knew the situation. He saw an hysterical woman overreacting. As a result, he denied me the service his role offered – that of protecting me and my children from harm. Instead, he gave me ridiculous reasons about why someone had been on my property, looking through the windows and taking pictures – one being perhaps the electricity person was doing a meter reading. Stigma can result in differential treatment, mishearing, not listening to someone, or a denial of service.’

‘When I was in family court, my lawyer, the judge, everyone in that room were white Australian and they were deciding things for the best interest of my child and they didn’t have basic knowledge about my culture, religion, and who I am.

‘I didn’t see justice. It added to my mental health, I was depressed, stressed, anxious, upset. And when I was like that, it had an effect on my parenting and it’s just like a loop that keeps going because of this issue in the system. I was really struggling, I couldn’t sleep all night, reading my files. I tried to be a lawyer myself because my lawyer wasn’t helping. And then in the morning I was tired, couldn’t function very well. And that doesn’t help because I was less of a good parent.’

‘When the kids were younger and making friends at school they would never invite them around. It wasn’t just that we didn’t have a lot of things and they were worried about being judged, it was also because our family in general held shame for them that I think they just wanted to get away from in any way possible. The shame of being poor, homeless, living in refuges, having a history of family violence and intervention. All that become this deep heaviness that was hard to get away from. It felt like it was carried around everywhere with us.’

‘I’ve experienced a lot of shaming towards bodily image or clothing and everything. It’s really, really degrading and hard to cope. I know I used to get angry or now I get a little bit distant. Sadness is my main response now, knowing kind of where the shame stems from. It’s caused the long-term effect of always questioning my outfits or whether it’s too revealing or basically discriminating against myself from all the shame that I’ve experienced from others. So yeah, it’s a long game trying to train my brain to know that it’s okay to wear what you feel comfortable in.’

– Jess, young person from a rural area

‘You don’t, as a kid, have the confidence to tell them they aren’t your mum (when people assume your foster parent is your biological mother). How do I tell people who don’t know this info about me? When I have kids they will know I didn’t live with my parents.’

– 15-year-old in foster care

‘Our son knew that his mother was different to most other mothers because of her illness and was ashamed of what people thought about her and what they thought about him. One year he virtually spent half a year sitting in the corridor at school because he was too ashamed to go in and face his classmates. And the school didn’t know how to deal with that.’

‘When I realised that I had a mental illness I was horrified. I was so ashamed, I didn’t want to go to the GP. To me, mental illness happened to unfortunate people, unemployed, uneducated, weaker people, not people like me who had a job, a good family, good upbringing and an education. I believed that having a mental illness made me a failure and meant that I was weak. Self-stigma was so strong, it stopped me getting help for a long time and that had impacts for my family and children, too.’