Deaf Children in China: Introduction...Gallaudet University Press

Introduction to Deaf Children in China continued...

There have been many Chinese surveys of deaf children in the last ten years: several of the most important are referred to in chapters 3 and 4. These are closely related to planning and monitoring the levels and effectiveness of rehabilitation services, and thus they focus on the quantifiable: typically, the population of deaf children in the area, causes of deafness, levels of hearing aid use, access to rehabilitation facilities, and the number of deaf children who are able to enter mainstream schooling after speech training in the preschool period. On the whole, Chinese surveys do not inquire into parents' views and attitudes, perhaps because Chinese professionals assume they understand these and do not believe that special investigation is merited. With these Chinese surveys in mind, I also considered it important to obtain extensive basic information concerning the deaf children in the families I interviewed—cause of deafness, age at diagnosis, hearing aid use—since all these factors affect the course and nature of intervention and provide essential context. Ultimately, out of the 133 questions posed, 106 questions sought straightforward, factual information and 27 asked parents for their views, attitudes, reactions, or perceptions concerning a particular issue.

Personal accounts by parents of deaf children reveal in great detail their experiences at the various stages following the diagnosis of deafness in their child. Western parents of deaf children who have provided such accounts include Thomas and James Spradley (1978), Marcia Forecki (1985), Pauline Shaw (1985), Lorraine Fletcher (1987), and Kathy Robinson (1991). Of several articles I read relating the experiences of Chinese parents, I was particularly struck by an account by Zhou Hong, later principal of the nursery school for deaf children where I carried out my research, of bringing up his deaf daughter (Oblau 1993). He offers a vivid firsthand description of his persistent visits to one doctor after another and his search for a medical cure following the diagnosis of his daughter's deafness. This and other sources detailing the same pattern of parental behavior underlined the importance of questioning the parents on their consultation of doctors and the various medical treatments they tried for their child.

I considered incorporating a control group of Chinese families with preschool-age hearing children in the research design, but I was uncertain that I would be able to obtain access to such a group. As a result, I decided to focus on interviews with families with deaf children only. For information concerning the experiences and attitudes of parents with hearing children, I relied on documentary sources (see chapter 2); I also could draw on my own experience bringing up a preschool-age child in China. Still, a key question to keep in mind when analyzing the data is whether comments by the parents interviewed and by the parents who wrote the letters to Zhou Hong are particular to their experience as parents of deaf children or could also have been made by parents of hearing children; in most cases the answer is clear or can be deduced from the context.

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