How many of the happy parents knew they were having a child with DS and accepted that? How many said, no testing because we wouldn’t abort anyway? And how many were just taken by surprise, as in the old days? Does the measure of happiness differ by group?
I miscarried a baby with DS, my cousin has a little girl with DS. She’s a happy child loved dearly by all her family, but her grandmother told me this summer, that the day of her birth when the pediatricians took her away and came back and said she had DS, was the worst day in her life, and she has certainly lived long enough and endured enough terrible days.
Once I was in a store when a man in his thirties with DS came in with his parents. The man was listless and dull-eyed; his parents worn, irritable and impatient with him. Such a sad thing to see. It can be a tremendous burden that breaks some people, especially if they are older and not well themselves, and this is where I think society needs to step in, much better than we do now.
“much better than we do now.”
It may vary from place to place but in my experience the support, from education to respite to medical care to developmental programs to job training, is really pretty impressive.