ABSTRACT
The truth is that all of us have to contend with our parents, for good or ill, but at least we can’t be committed at birth to spending the rest of our lives as circus performers or bank clerks, or missionaries. We have free will, and the great thing about growing up is personal choice. What choice is there if your parents have already decided that you are going to be deaf, and that deafness will be your defining identity, just as it has been theirs? This is not the beauty of compatibility, it is genetic imperialism.1
