if your confused about the meaning of my comment, the accuracy of the numbers given in the quoted text:
Of the 2,044 respondents, 99% reported that they love their son or daughter; 97% were proud of them; 79% felt their outlook on life was more positive because of them; 5% felt embarrassed by them; and 4% regretted having them. The parents report that 95% of their sons or daughters without Down syndrome have good relationships with their siblings with Down syndrome
… sound like wishful thinking as much as the wishful thinking revealed in your point:
...and also by the fact that if you ask people if they hypothetically would abort for a positive they consider very unlikely, they answer much more in denial (23%-33%) than if you actually give them a positive test, at which point choosing to abort skyrockets to 89%-97.
i.e. If the reader accepts that the “23%-33%” is bogus then the “99%, 97%, etc.” would also be bogus for the same reasons.
For the change in mind when the question on abortion goes from hypothetical and abstract to imagined acutely now, one can easily imagine an explanation—that people, for the first time, think through the implications of actually having a disabled kid right now, with their current finances and jobs and obligations, and feel utterly overwhelmed at not thinking about handling this one day maybe, but handling it right now, when it is not what they were expecting at all.
But later, they have had the child, their position has fundamentally changed, they know a lot more, they actually know what it is like after the initial shock, how much of their fear was rooted in ignorance and stereotypes. Yes, their position has also changed in that getting rid of the child is now more difficult, so there may well be a phenomenon where they accept a position that is hard to change and talk themselves into liking it. But this is true of all parents. And yet, among down syndrome children, the result does not seem that different.
If they said that yes, keeping the child with the condition was in fact awful, I find it plausible that they would be judged less than parents of children without the syndrome, who tend to get hell for saying they regret their children’s birth, so the pressure to lie would be less. After all, the numbers above suggests that the people who ask you would likely abort such a child themselves, so who are they to judge a person for not being happy with such a surprise child? And yet, the parents of kids with the syndrome generally do not express persistent regret—and they are so convincing in their statements that after talking to them, and seeing them with their kids, many prospective parents decide to keep the baby, or adopt a child with this condition. And the parents who make these statements sometimes end up adopting an additional child with down syndrome. I can’t imagine why they would do that if they didn’t mean it, noone is expecting them to. This is also consistent with the general finding that aversion to having a disabled child is higher if you have spent less time with disabled children—when you actually interact with them, and get more data and experience, you find they are not what you expected.
Like, seriously, listen to such parents and their kids and judge yourself if it looks like they are all lying. It is common to assume that they must be lying or delusional before engaging with them, because people who have no exposure to disabled folks often cannot imagine being genuinely happy with them. But it really looks like this changes when you actually meet them. They do, very honestly, state that their initial reaction was shock, grief, devastation, but trace how that changed over time.
if your confused about the meaning of my comment, the accuracy of the numbers given in the quoted text:
… sound like wishful thinking as much as the wishful thinking revealed in your point:
i.e. If the reader accepts that the “23%-33%” is bogus then the “99%, 97%, etc.” would also be bogus for the same reasons.
I do not see how that is trivially obvious?
For the change in mind when the question on abortion goes from hypothetical and abstract to imagined acutely now, one can easily imagine an explanation—that people, for the first time, think through the implications of actually having a disabled kid right now, with their current finances and jobs and obligations, and feel utterly overwhelmed at not thinking about handling this one day maybe, but handling it right now, when it is not what they were expecting at all.
But later, they have had the child, their position has fundamentally changed, they know a lot more, they actually know what it is like after the initial shock, how much of their fear was rooted in ignorance and stereotypes. Yes, their position has also changed in that getting rid of the child is now more difficult, so there may well be a phenomenon where they accept a position that is hard to change and talk themselves into liking it. But this is true of all parents. And yet, among down syndrome children, the result does not seem that different.
If they said that yes, keeping the child with the condition was in fact awful, I find it plausible that they would be judged less than parents of children without the syndrome, who tend to get hell for saying they regret their children’s birth, so the pressure to lie would be less. After all, the numbers above suggests that the people who ask you would likely abort such a child themselves, so who are they to judge a person for not being happy with such a surprise child? And yet, the parents of kids with the syndrome generally do not express persistent regret—and they are so convincing in their statements that after talking to them, and seeing them with their kids, many prospective parents decide to keep the baby, or adopt a child with this condition. And the parents who make these statements sometimes end up adopting an additional child with down syndrome. I can’t imagine why they would do that if they didn’t mean it, noone is expecting them to. This is also consistent with the general finding that aversion to having a disabled child is higher if you have spent less time with disabled children—when you actually interact with them, and get more data and experience, you find they are not what you expected.
Like, seriously, listen to such parents and their kids and judge yourself if it looks like they are all lying. It is common to assume that they must be lying or delusional before engaging with them, because people who have no exposure to disabled folks often cannot imagine being genuinely happy with them. But it really looks like this changes when you actually meet them. They do, very honestly, state that their initial reaction was shock, grief, devastation, but trace how that changed over time.