Children, Deaf, of Hearing Parents

A central fact of life experience for most children born deaf worldwide is that about 90 percent will have hearing parents. This familial circumstance [Page 116]has significant impacts on deaf children’s linguistic and socioemotional development, since the deaf infant cannot learn their parent’s language modality spoken in the way the hearing parents did. The relative rarity of this trait among newborns (1–3:1,000) in Europe and the United States, with levels reaching up to 6:1,000 in low-resource countries, means few hearing parents will have close familiarity with Deaf social groups and the local or national sign languages.

A summary description of the overall social circumstances of hearing parents suggests that poverty, increased population-based epidemic or endemic infections of certain viruses, and high rates of intermarriage in social groups expressing genetic traits for deafness account for clusters of infant deafness both historically and currently. Yet the diverse array of causes of neonatal and early-onset deafness, whether from viruses, maternal malnutrition/anorexia, ototoxic drugs, or a wide range of genes, ensures that infant deafness occurs at rather unchanging rates despite technological advancement. The sorts of causes of early childhood deafness result in disproportionate numbers of hearing parents among certain populations. In the United States, for example, hearing parents of deaf children are more likely to be Caucasian than African American, and they are least likely to be Hispanic. Well-documented examples of clusters of deafness and the formation of bilingual signed and spoken language sociolinguistic groups have existed for over 300 years on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and among Bedouins of Israel.

Historically, relationships between hearing parents and children deaf before the acquisition of speech have been marked by two consequential factors with individual and general sociocultural effects. The first is the difficulty of diagnosing profound infant deafness and the substantial psychosocial and learning effects on children from delayed or lack of diagnoses. With improvements in newborn hearing screening technologies, many countries have instituted universal screening after birth. Efforts are under way to develop less expensive methods of infant testing. Yet the majority of children live where they won’t receive accurate newborn hearing screening. Thus, it matters greatly where a deaf child is born to hearing parents, the second factor that greatly affects parent-child relationships and participation or not in Deaf sociolinguistic groups.

Cross-culturally comparative research by Lakshmi Fjord with hearing parents of deaf infants from diagnosis onward reveals how culturally embedded and varied are medical practices in deafness; social ethics toward sign languages as first languages of deaf infants; and the inclusion of Deaf signing adults and other hearing parents as experts to counsel new hearing parents about linguistic, educational, and technological interventions with long-debated histories. However, before parents make any decisions linked to deaf infants, they first need to know the child is unable to learn a first language by hearing alone.

Diagnoses of the condition after infancy have long stymied hearing parents and medical specialists because of difficulties in reading deafness in the child’s expressive and receptive cues. After infancy, behaviors associated with being unable to hear and speak were also once signs of severe “mental retardation” or “mental illness”; now of intellectual, psychosocial, and cognitive impairments. In some societies, these are now discrete diagnoses, but these are neither universal cultural nor uncontested scientific classifications. Histories of isolated deaf children with little or no language, whose intellectual or social capacities were never fully realized, underlie passionate, often highly contested perspectives held by the constellation of deaf adults, family members, or people with specialist interest in deaf people. No matter their preferences in debates over language and education, everyone agrees on the critical importance of early diagnosis.

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