This is prompted by the reactions to the reports that Arthur Miller placed his son into care 40 years ago. And he used to describe him as a mongoloid! How could he?
Well lots of good people thought that way. And I dont believe it happened in the Miller case but there were plenty of medical professionals who believed it unkind to let a mother even see a handicapped baby
It was also perfectly normal to restrict visits to children in hospital to one a week, & to keep you out of the consulting room while a child received treatment - the mothers distress conveys itself to the child, you know. Margaret Drabbles book, The Millstone, conveys some of this very powerfully.
Such a condemnatory attitude towards Miller seems to me particularly ill-behoved in a generation whose medical advisers take it for granted that one of the aims of ante-natal care should be to seek & destroy any foetus suffering from Downs Syndrome
Some current favourites for what our descendants may say about us:
- surgery: You mean to say they used to cut people open?
- fat: They used to think that eating fat was bad for you
- education: They used to herd all children into special buildings where they had to sit down all day & were only allowed to mix with others who were born in the same year as they were
Link
The many lives of Rebecca Miller
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