Made to Hear

This editorial reflects my perspectives on the contents of a book, Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children, by Laura Mauldin (2016). It would not be a stretch to make a few connections to the discussions on the identity and condition of deafness in several chapters in one book published recently (e.g., De Clerck, 2012; McKee & Hauser, 2012; M. Miller, 2012; Parasnis, 2012; Paul & Moores, 2012). Or, to suggest that this is another rendition of a related response to the questions What’s it like to be deaf? (e.g., Paul, 2014; Paul, in press) and Can it be a good thing to be deaf? (Cooper, 2012). I encourage readers to refer to the above sources and form their own interpretations after reading Made to Hear.

In addition to an introduction and conclusion, Made to Hear contains five chapters as well as acknowledgments, notes, a bibliography, and an index, for a total of 215 pages. This book is based on Mauldin’s multisited ethnographic research project. The limitations of this type of research need to be kept in mind, especially with respect to generalization and representativeness. In any case, the data sources included 10 parents of implanted children, professionals at schools and one cochlear implant (CI) clinic, observations of the clinic and school programs, and parent support groups and events. The entire project occurred over approximately 6 months.

The main focus is on the range of experiences of the families from newborn screening to the diagnosis of deafness to the candidacy process to the implant surgery to the post-surgery period. The familial experiences are complex, and are certainly—per the author’s interpretations—more nuanced than the current debates on the merits of cochlear implantation. Instead of arguing whether CIs are good or bad, the author maintains that the focus should be on the lengthy ambivalent implementation process. I have no doubt that the author would find strong advocates in my university department, with her grounding of the cochlear implantation process in sociocultural or sociopolitical contexts, chock-full of social justice and injustice issues. Indeed, for Mauldin, everything is sociocultural and everything is sociopolitical. Even the worlds of medicine and science do not escape this labeling endeavor—that is, medicine and science (and, indeed, other disciplines as well) are not neutral and are part of ideologies. Although I am not amused and do not concur wholeheartedly (e.g., see Popper in D. Miller, 1985, for a readable discussion), I can certainly appreciate the interpretative contexts.

The book title is intentionally ambiguous, referring, for example, to one of the main distance senses of humans or to individuals (specifically children) who receive CIs. The ambiguity is disputatious—and the message resonates throughout the entire book. In essence, the controversial made to hear concept produces enormous stress for mothers and their families. Mauldin’s view is that the mothers are the major players, particularly in the context of feminist scholarship.

In this book, readers will need to become acclimated to the jargon of ethnography, which is explained in a fairly user-friendly repetitive manner by the author. Some common constructs include scripts, socialization, anticipatory structures, and my favorite—ambivalent medicalization. Actually, the construct ambivalence can be applied to any other construct in any field or discipline. To borrow Mauldin’s words, this means that the situation can be “demanding and rewarding, and with limitations and possibilities” (p. 174). In my view, this is a far cry from evaluating cochlear implantation or any other construct such as technology, medicine, science, ideology, and so on as simply either good or bad. There can be negative or positive consequences, which, in Mauldin’s view, are pervasively influenced by the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts.

Judging by the number of folded pages (instead of dog-ears) and underlined sentences and passages in my copy of the book, it’s obvious that I had strong reactions, fueled by my own extremely positive and life-changing experiences in receiving two CIs. Nevertheless, I had to temper a few of my reactions because I recognized that there are major differences (cognitively, culturally, economically, politically, socially) between the...