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Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children

Online ISBN:
9781452954325
Print ISBN:
9780816697243
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
Book

Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children

Laura Mauldin
Laura Mauldin
University of Connecticut
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Published:
15 February 2016
Online ISBN:
9781452954325
Print ISBN:
9780816697243
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press

Abstract

Made to Hear reveals the structure and culture of the systems we have built to make deaf children hear. Based on an ethnographic investigation of families who adopt the cochlear implant (CI) for their deaf child, this book describes the experiences of mothers as they navigate the healthcare system, the professionals that work with them, and the influence of neuroscience on the process. The book focuses not on the Deaf community’s argument against adopting CI implants, but on the multiyear endeavor that parents undertake in its implantation. Every year, thousands of families obtain a CI for their deaf child and begin the process of habilitation. Thus, rather than taking a side in the debate, the book uses empirical evidence to evaluate the arguments made by both sides. What unfolds is a description of a broader social context in which science, medicine and technology are trusted to vanquish disability and how mothers are expected to use those tools. Since the CI has become widely available, ‘good mothers’ get one for their deaf child and commit to years of intensive therapeutic labor. What quickly emerges is the power of neuroscientific explanation and the ubiquity of discourse that suggests mothers are engaged in a battle for neural real estate. Made to Hear reveals that implantation has the central goal of controlling the development of the deaf child’s brain through building synapses for spoken language and inhibiting those for sign language, placing the politics of the neuroscience front and center.

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