Statistics are a weird thing, and not always helpful. My mother always said, “You have more of a chance of getting kicked to death by mules than of being in a plane crash.” But somehow, the mule-kicking death seemed preferable and less likely. I could, conceivably, roll away from the mule-hoof and survive, whereas a plane crash…?<\/p>\n
And remember that Susan Faludi statistic that said that there was an ever-diminishing chance that a woman in her forties would get married? Do you remember that this was eventually debunked? But how easy it was for us all to believe it. And how many middle age single women felt worse about their lives for it?<\/p>\n
Now, when interviewing autism parents for my new book, I hear again and again “that statistic” about how autism marriages dissolve with far greater frequency than non-autism marriages. When I ask for the study that showed that, no one can point me to it.<\/p>\n
Can anyone point me to that study? Kristina Chew, a brilliant young autism mom and St. Peter’s College professor has not found it.<\/a> I kind of figure that if Kristina couldn’t find it, none of us actually could.<\/p>\n It doesn’t help to perpetuate this kind of urban legend. Life is hard enough.<\/p>\n And, incidentally, as I talk to people, it is fascinating to see that probably for as many people who feel that autism wrecked their marriage there are as many who feel that autism made them stronger.<\/p>\n And while we’re at it,<\/p>\n Life is hard enough for people with developmental disabilities and their families. So maybe Hollywood can find some other target to shoot at<\/a>. Oh, sure, they do a send-up of all sorts of Hollywood genres in Tropic Thunder.<\/span> That’s how Max sees it. Yet, I believe there is a particular cringe factor to using the term “retard” the way this film does. Yes, the feel-good portrayal of retarded people in movies does get kind of tiresome. That’s because we want to see disabled people as the multi-dimensional humans they really are, not just as someone to make fun of<\/a> — as Tropic Thunder<\/span> does — or as someone to merely feel sorry for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Statistics are a weird thing, and not always helpful. My mother always said, “You have more of a chance of getting kicked to death by mules than of being in a plane crash.” But somehow, the mule-kicking death seemed preferable and less likely. I could, conceivably, roll away from the mule-hoof and survive, whereas a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-7b","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}