My childhood was often very different from what I expected. In fact, my childhood was likely very different from what most people expect anyone’s childhood to be like. Growing up as the oldest child of deaf parents immersed me in a world of responsibility uncharacteristic of most young children. I was often found interpreting for my parents at parent-teacher conferences, ordering food for my parents in restaurants, making any necessary phone calls, and paying attention to all the grown-up conversations so I could fill in the gaps in my parents’ understanding later. Starting at a very young age, I also performed tasks such as proofreading letters, explaining written technical documentation, and interpreting written policies in a way that made it easier for my parents to understand.
The deviation from the norm observed in families consisting of deaf parents and hearing children affects several aspects of the social construction of the family unit. In these instances, the role of the children will change and the children will experience high degrees of anticipatory socialization as their responsibility increases above that of the average child. For these children, a sense of social identity, tactical impression management, empathy, embarrassment and spoiled identity, and high levels of willingness to help for altruistic reasons are extremely pervasive and important in their lives.
It was not always easy for me to be the “little grown-up”, but in the social landscape of deaf culture, many of the tasks I performed were normal and expected of the eldest child in any family in which the patriarch and matriarch were deaf. As time goes on and technology to assist my deaf parents becomes increasingly available, their independence as members of society has begun to grow exponentially. The social landscape and family dynamic of deaf culture has slowly begun to change.
The unique needs brought about by being raised in a family with deaf parents causes a shift in what would be the normal role of a child in the typical United States family. Whereas for most children their role would entail that of a typical child- they are to go play in the corner while the grownups talk and typically will not have a hand in many, if any, of the affairs of the adults in their lives (DeLameter & Myers 2007). For me, however, I could not follow the norm of staying uninvolved as a child. It was critically important for me to make sure that I paid close attention to the conversation so as to be able to mitigate any misunderstandings, if needed.
One benefit I received from my family arrangement is a generous dose of anticipatory socialization. Anticipatory socialization occurs when a person observes or practices a role in which he or she is not currently in a situation to adapt (DeLameter & Myers 2007). While many of the tasks that I performed for my parents were not tasks that I currently needed to perform for myself, I had already encountered many situations and problems by age 10 that I would not otherwise have experienced until 10 years later or longer. Because of my various interactions with my parents in their affairs, there were very few encounters as I entered my adult life that truly felt like my first time accomplishing a particular event.
Although anticipatory socialization may have prepared me for events that would occur later in my own life, sometimes I would have a hard time discovering and creating my own identities. Social identities are important in order for people to understand their roles and expectations as individuals in groups (DeLameter & Myers 2007). I did not choose the identity of “little grown-up” for myself, but nevertheless it was an identity that was very pervasive in my childhood life. Because I spent so much time fulfilling the identity of “little grown-up”, I did not have as much time to focus on creating my own social identities. As a result, when my parents’ need for my assistance on a daily basis became reduced, the lack of my own social identity was fairly overwhelming. I had to do a lot of soul searching and solitary activities before I started feeling I had regained a social identity of my own choosing.
One thing that was very important to me as a child, because it was extremely important to my parents, was practicing a high degree of tactical impression management. Managing the identity that one wishes other people to see influences how other people understand and interpret that individual (DeLameter & Myers 2007). My parents were, and still are, extremely concerned with other people’s perception of them and our family unit. Whether I was with my parents or not, there was a huge emphasis on always looking nice and clean, always speaking in a manner that would cause other people to feel good about themselves, and never talking about anything derogatory or unpleasant that might have happened at home, regardless of how minor the situation might have been.
Because of all the negative stereotypes many people hold about deaf people, my parents took it upon themselves to be the shining example for the entire deaf community. Any infraction against the identity my parents wanted to portray for our family would be met with extreme embarrassment on the part of my parents. If myself or one of my sisters was responsible for spoiling the perfectly crafted identity, all three of us received a long lecture on the importance of maintaining our particular identities and why we had to be certain to act in specific ways.
However, there was one aspect of tactical identity management that was important to me and was not directly influenced by my parents. My mom did not realize how much impression management I had to do on my own until a few years ago when I related to her some stories of things that happened when I was helping them. In order to be taken seriously whether over the phone or in person, I had to be very adult in my manner of speech, in my vocabulary, and in every aspect of my own presentation of myself. I eventually learned to slightly lower my voice and slow down my speech when ordering a pizza over the telephone because many people had hung up on me for being unable to put my parents on the phone line. Frequently, any time I would try to order something over the phone for my mom or my dad, I was accused of playing a terrible prank and was often told off by adults for playing with the telephone. Even as a child, I was frustrated that other people seemed incapable of understanding our predicament and why we had to change our norm from that accepted by the rest of society. Situations such as these caused me to realize the importance of making myself seem as much like an adult as possible, and I began expressing a more adult personality in order to make myself accepted in the adult world.
For all the aforementioned reasons, it was and continues to be important that I be highly empathetic to my parents’ emotions. Empathy is an important social motion because it enables us to put ourselves in another person’s shoes and to attempt to see the world as another person sees the world (DeLameter & Myers 2007). Because communication with society at large was primarily my responsibility as a child, it was important and morally right for me to be sure that any emotions, thoughts, or ideas I expressed to other people on behalf of my parents was an accurate representation of how my parents actually felt about a particular topic or situation.
Throughout my childhood I spent an incredible amount of time helping my parents. Helping and altruism are complex topics in the field of social psychology, and understanding the motivations for helping other people gives great insight into social behavior. My motivation for giving help to my parents is multifaceted and difficult to pinpoint on any particular factor or group of factors. Egoistic considerations in my case are born less of a desire for rewards, because any gain I received was because I was the child of my parents and not as a true reward for any help I might have given them day-to-day. My egoistic considerations would be more related to a cost ratio, because my parents would be extremely disappointed in me any time I refused or was reluctant to help them for any reason. Although, as I got older and my capacity for empathy increased, I was able to more understand the situation my parents were experiencing. Knowing how difficult it was for my parents to live in a world designed for people who can hear made it easier for me to accept dedicating so much of myself to helping them. On the occasions when empathetic concern was not enough to convince me to provide help of some form, my mom would take it upon herself to “guilt-trip” me into compliance with her needs and desires. Of course, they are my parents and the evolutionary perspective would posit that I am more likely to help somebody who is closely related to me (DeLameter & Myers 2007).
More recently, technology has become available that mitigates my role in many of the events in my parents’ lives into something that more closely resembles the norm of the parent-child relationship in the United States. Videophones, web-cams, instant messaging, e-mail, online shopping, cell phones with QWERTY keyboards, and numerous other technological advancements have reduced my parents’ need to rely on me to perform various tasks. I have experienced some role discontinuity from the change in my historical role in the family. Most days, I half expect that at least one of my parents will ask me to make a phone call, but the frequency of being asked to do so has been greatly reduced since many people and companies who previously operated only in person or over the phone now allow or encourage live online chat, e-mail, or setting your own appointment using an online form.
As my parents dependence on me is slowly reduced, more and more technology becomes available to assist them in their daily activities. All aspects of the lives of deaf people are being affected by these amazing advances. Currently, studies are being completed on the way to best convert the typically complicated written English versions of health education materials. The typical deaf person in the United States reads written English at a fourth-grade level and speaks American Sign Language as the primary language (Pollard Jr. et al. 2009). In order to ensure understanding of important risk factors affecting their health, people should have access to information written in their native language. Health education materials are available in numerous languages including English, Spanish, Arabic, French, and almost any language any person could conceive. However, education materials have generally not been made available in American Sign Language, either in a visual medium or in a translated written medium. In the past, it has been one of my responsibilities to help my parents interpret information given to them by doctors and other healthcare professionals. The research proposed by Pollard Jr. et al. to make these resources available to speakers of American Sign Language is a giant leap in increasing the independence of deaf people.
As advances in the independence of deaf people continue to increase, the social dynamic of the typical family consisting of deaf parents and hearing children in the United States will continue to change. Deaf people will gain increased independence in communicating with the outside world and will rely less and less on the hearing people in their lives. The lives of the children of deaf people will continue to more closely resemble the norm of the typical American family. In short, the lives of those children will become more of what we expect.
