To John,
Thanks for your "Trilogy" - looks like you make some important points
(have only glossed so far)
I also want to commend you for coming out and saying earlier that if you
had know what you know now - abortion wd have been an option.
To the Rest,
I have to take issue with Laurence Bathurst' research - can't help
thinking that he's come to his data with a strong need to prove that
everything unpleasant in life is merely a social construct - to me this
is a fairytale - it requires a notion of infants born in some kind of
essential "Original Perfection" - as absurd as the doctrine of "Original
Sin" that it's partially attempting to replace. Extreme social
constructionism is a kind of variant of a "Just World" fantasy that we
know always leads to disaster when adherents attempt to act on it -
either wishing to blame the victim, or at least "re-educate" them.
I speak as the parent of a child with Asperger's Syndrome, (often
thought of as Autism with normal to high intelligence), the daughter of
a mother with the same, and some traits myself, though to a much more
disguisable extent. So what I have to say draws only on my experience
of this "disability".
My experience of the feelings of parents of children with AS is an
irreducible ambivalence - which I cannot imagine being solved even if
there were sensitively trained social workers trooping through the house
from dawn to dusk. Our kids are adorable and maddening at the same
time - and they suffer too, yes, *suffer*! because they're highly
intelligent, and yet they can't seem to do the things they reach for and
they don't understand why. Their/our extreme sensitivity makes them/us
constantly subject to anxiety and overload. Adult autistics don't
minimise these difficulties - yes, a lot needs to be done to make
society more aware - but there will always be these issues, there will
always be tensions and mutual irritation between autistics and
'neurotypicals'.
I view any "research' which attempts in any way to tame or reduce the
full emotional range that humans are capable of to something comfortable
and manageable and reassuring with suspicion. Some of the research I
read reminds me of money laundering. When you look for where the
substance is, all you find is an incomprehensible paper trail of more
and more obscure definitions of definitions - "roles" and "identities"
and "loss of self" - what the hell does this mean - until you're so
caught up in the fight over definitions that you completely and
conveniently forget the original question.
And I'm sorry Laurence, because this is hitting below the belt, but it
needs to be said. When men who don't have children research mothers -
they better be very careful not to fall into all kinds of foucauldian
error - "constructing themselves as 'subjects' and improving their
social status" at the expense of those who are in no position to
research them straight back.
Any mother will tell you that people who've never had children will just
never know the full range of pain and pleasure that the world has to
offer. All the more so when the child is outside the tried and tested
developmental pathways. I'm sorry that when it comes to disabilities,
parents often seem to be pitted against children, but when the sun goes
down- they're the ones who are left to raise the child, not a nameless
cohort of disability activists with an answer for everything.
Judy Singer
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