To What Extent Can Parents Choose For Their Children?

“A Tight Little Island in the World of Deafness”
Author: Anita Gates
Publication: New York Times
Date: April 8, 2000

As we previously discussed, the deaf community deems it unethical for hearing parents to peremptorily decide for their deaf children to use cochlear implants. However, hearing parents rejoin that it is irrational to discount the weight of parental authority over minors. Given this argument, let us now consider the opposite situation: Could deaf parents use the same justification to reject cochlear implants for their deaf children?

It is not unreasonable for parents to exercise the right to make decisions on their children’s behalf. Nor does it seem unjust for parents to expect their children to join the community of which they themselves are members. Yet, by this light, do deaf parents have the express right to raise their children within a separatist subculture? This is, as Gates points out, essentially what the Amish have been doing for quite some time.

Understandably, no parent desires for the lines of communication with his children to be diminished, let alone severed. Yet, it seems unfair, even cruel, for parents to deny their children any kind of beneficial treatment within the family’s means. Gates’ article reviews the documentary film “Sound and Fury,” which follows one family’s painful dispute over cochlear implant use. In the film, Peter Artinian (the father of the household) candidly states that he was delighted all three of his children were born deaf like himself. Not surprisingly, he feels betrayed when his daughter expresses the desire to get a cochlear implant—what amounts essentially to the desertion of their deaf community. By contrast, Peter’s hearing brother, Chris Artinian, unreservedly goes ahead with the implant surgery for his newborn deaf son. In further proof of the inter-family friction, Peter’s father (who is not deaf) remarks to his son, “It’s not intended for people to have handicaps…If I didn’t know you, I would say you were an abusing parent.”

It seems brutal to accuse a loving parent of abusing his child, but there is a clear difference in the permissibility of one parent’s decision over the other’s. This distinction lies in the irreversibility of the decision reached. If a child who has received a cochlear implant is unhappy with the outcome, he may, at any time, deactivate the device and take up sign language. Of course, he would have pointlessly undergone an invasive operation and sacrificed his residual hearing; nevertheless, he would always have the two options—either to continue or discontinue use—open to him. On the other hand, if a child were denied a cochlear implant, but later desired one as an adult, he would never be able to see the dramatic improvements common for infants implanted with the device. As mentioned in an earlier entry, the timing of the implant surgery is critical to its success because younger children are far more adept at acquiring new language skills than adults. Therefore, the parents’ right to decide what is best for their children is really only a secondary consideration. What is of genuine concern to us is that such valuable technology not be ignored, regardless of what parents think.

In a democratic society which champions diversity, we assert that “no particular skin color, religion, sexual orientation, political ideology, chronological age or physical attribute is superior to another.” Yet, if we truly believe that differences should be embraced, does this not also mean that physical handicaps should be accepted as is? Or have we all become so afraid of offending anyone that we now promote the preservation of disabilities? These are deeply divisive questions, but perhaps they may be answered by first assessing what they all presuppose: that deafness is definitely a handicap.