Review

Stuff your attitudes

BIGGER THAN THE SKY: disabled women on parenting
Michele Wates and Rowen Jade (eds)
The Women’s Press, 1999, £8.99

See a disabled person in the street, at a concert, at work, out and about anywhere: you make many assumptions but what you rarely ‘see’ is a prospective or actual parent. In this anthology the editors set out to ‘examine the links between disability and parenting from many different points of view’ and ‘to expose myths and challenge stereotypes’.

The editors advertised far and wide for contributions and were rewarded with a richness of material that more than fulfils their aims. No one pretends that parenting is anything other than a serious undertaking but the all-too-common view of able-bodied society that disabled people should not have children or become parents is turned upside down by the experience and argument marshalled here.

As the editors point out: ‘Countless disabled women of earlier generations were prevented from parenting by institutionalisation, compulsory sterilisations or enforced adoptions.’

Strongly informed by an outdated medical viewpoint, which sees only problems rather than alternative approaches, public and professionals alike often regard disabled people with young children as ‘irresponsible’ or ‘amazing’ (a no-win situation for us disabled mothers).

Or the genetic argument comes into play, advising people with a high likelihood of bearing a child with impairments to have genetic counselling and testing, so as to terminate any ‘undesirable’ pregnancy as early as possible. Disabled people with a genetically inherited impairment are of course doubly irresponsible, to deliberately think of bringing an impaired child into the world.

But, as they say, in practice the theory is different. This collection illustrates just how different – from planning to be parents, to the actual processes (including birth and adoption) to parenting growing children, and even helping children prepare for a parent’s early death.

The contributors come from around the world and from a range of backgrounds and cultures, birth situations and chosen lifestyles. What unites them is that they have all embraced the pain and the pleasure of parenthood or, at the very least, have considered it seriously.

As disabled women we are always wary of reinforcing the negative attitudes of those who criticise the choices we make for ourselves. The editors have collected examples which say, in effect, ‘stuff your attitudes’. And quite right too.