Purpose

This article examines the educational decision-making of hearing parents for their deaf children born during a period (1970–1990s) before the introduction of new-born hearing screening in New South Wales, where the study was conducted, and prior to the now near-universal adoption of cochlear implants in Australia.

Design/methodology/approach

We present findings from an oral history study in which parents were invited to recall how they planned for the education of their deaf children.

Findings

We propose that these oral histories shed light on how the concept, early intervention – a child development principle that became axiomatic from about the 1960s – significantly shaped the conduct of parents of deaf children, constituting both hope and burden, and intensifying a focus on early decision-making. They also illustrate ways in which parenting was shaped by two key structural shifts, one, being the increasing enrolment of deaf children in mainstream rather than separate classrooms and the other being the transformation of deafness itself by developments in hearing assistance technology.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to a sociological/historical literature of “parenting for education” that almost entirely lacks deaf perspectives and a specialist literature of parental decision-making for deaf children that is almost entirely focussed on the post cochlear implant generation. The paper is distinctive in its treatment of the concept of “early intervention” as a historical phenomenon rather than a “common sense” truth, and proposes that parents of deaf children were at the leading edge of late-20th and early-21st century parenting intensification.

中文翻译：

---

早期干预的希望与负担：20世纪60年代后澳大利亚聋儿父母的教育规划

目的

本文探讨了在新南威尔士州引入新生儿听力筛查之前（1970-1990 年代）出生的聋哑儿童的听力父母的教育决策，该研究在那里进行，现在接近-在澳大利亚普遍采用人工耳蜗。

设计/方法/途径

我们展示了一项口述历史研究的结果，在该研究中，父母被邀请回忆他们是如何计划对聋哑儿童进行教​​育的。

发现

我们建议这些口述历史阐明早期干预这一概念——从 1960 年代左右开始成为不言而喻的儿童发展原则——如何显着影响聋儿父母的行为，既构成希望又构成负担，并加强对早期干预的关注决策。他们还说明了两个关键的结构性转变对养育方式的影响，一个是越来越多的失聪儿童进入主流而不是单独的教室，另一个是助听器技术的发展对耳聋本身的转变。

原创性/价值

这篇论文对几乎完全缺乏聋人视角的“为教育而育儿”的社会学/历史文献做出了贡献，而对几乎完全关注人工耳蜗植入后一代的聋儿父母决策的专家文献也做出了贡献。该论文的独特之处在于将“早期干预”的概念视为一种历史现象而非“常识”真理，并提出聋儿父母处于 20 世纪末和 21 世纪初育儿的前沿集约化。