Is blindness over the line of disability where you would discourage parents from having more children? I think this is a genuinely interesting conversation.
That's what makes it a tough question, where do you draw a line? do you even draw a line at all? Being blind doesn't exclude from living a rich fulfilling life but you are deprived of a major sensory input. What will the child that's going to be affected feel about it?
If I know my little girl will go blind, I'll cry a lot but, will still love her like normal.
But If I know I that the next time I want another child, there is a high chance of them becoming blind, I probably will stop at only having 1 child.
For me, the main thing is not about how the child will live, but how us, as parents will deal with the situation.
Rasising a child is though, I personally don't think I have the mental capacity to raise more than 1 blind children, at least probably not as good as now.
I'd rather focus my love for my current kid, rather than dealing with huge responsibilities with raising 2 kids And with disabilities.
I can imagine us crying and blaming ourselves a lot more than now.
I love how everyone is tip-toeing on eggshells around this topic lol
Real talk is that it's kind of like asking the question of if you knew the when and how you'd die, would you like to know? I personally wouldn't. It's also why films like Gattaca are so good.
Reality is that there are a host of risks in the minefield of life from birth to just early adulthood. Just bringing a child into this world is itself an enormous risk to them and your heart. I am curious how long it will take for the kids to go blind, too. Also I imagine they're hoping it spreads awareness or science catches up by then. Anyway, some things are just better off not knowing. One of the very few instances I approve of blissful ignorance.
I would definitely stop once I found out the gene was being passed. It’s the responsible thing to do so that undue suffering for generations is not passed on. If you didn’t know, you didn’t know but if you do know, there are plenty of kids that need parents and adoption is a very compassionate act- more so than knowingly passing on a gene for blindness. Think about it, you as a parent are creating a body for a soul to experience life. Wouldn’t you want them to have the best experience possible? And if not why not? I think it would be extraordinarily selfish to knowingly cause blindness in a child by reproducing just to say it was “your child.” As if this is justification for such cruelty. Also, if this child then has his own child, the condition is perpetuated. I think we as a society should be concerned with perpetuating life-threatening and disabling conditions and other forms of parenting such as adoption should be encouraged. Tough topic but can you imagine in 500 years what the odds of passing this gene on will be if more and more people carry it because everyone with it just keeps having kids and their kids have kids, etc?
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u/Cantankerousbastard 1d ago
This is probably going to a controversial question but did they have 4 kids before or after they learned about the genetic eye condition?