ABSTRACT
There was a noteworthy correlation between the estimation of the effect of a parent's own carrier status on his or her life, and the number of pregnancy losses suffered, suggesting that pregnancy loss has a significant effect on parental views of and attitudes towards the translocation. This chapter suggests that a high level of parental interest in childhood testing, with the parents of 63.9% of untested minors wanting their child tested before the age of 16. Some findings of a study C. A. Barnes, 1996, designed to explore some of the views and experiences of ‘carriers’ of balanced chromosomal translocations about the testing of their healthy offspring for these inherited rearrangements, are described and discussed. Predictably within a group of translocation carrier parents, the average rate of pregnancy loss was high, with over 70% of respondents having lost at least one pregnancy and over 30% losing three or more.
