ownership

After writing yesterday, it struck me that I had only recently read a book about children who are in some sense unlike their parents – Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon (who has also written a well-regarded book about depression, The Noonday Demon). The second chapter has interesting things to say about what happens when the deaf children of hearing parents come into contact with deaf adults, often in the context of education. To encounter a community of signers – a linguistic and cultural context in which the deaf child might feel ‘at home’ – can be an experience that is on the one hand fulfilling for the child and on the other painful for the parents:

[T]he fear of losing one’s child to the Deaf world is more than a dark fantasy. I met many deaf people who thought of the previous generation of deaf people as their parents. The higher achievement levels of deaf of deaf [i.e. deaf children of deaf parents] were often used as an argument that deaf children should be adopted by deaf adults. Even a pro-Deaf hearing parent said, ‘Sometimes Deaf culture looks like the Moonies to me: “Your child will be happy, just don’t expect to see her any more, she’s too busy being happy.”’

In this context Solomon quotes Cheryl Heppner, herself deaf, who offers information and advice to families:

Deaf people feel ownership of deaf children. I admit it. I feel it too. I really struggle in not wanting to interfere with a parent’s right to parent, at the same time knowing that they have to accept that the child can never be one hundred percent theirs.

I’m not sure what I want to say about this dynamic – it is probably unwise to comment from the outside – but, if we’re talking about learning how life is done, about insights passed from one generation to another, there is something particularly arresting about the case of the Deaf.