Sun, Jun 11, 2000 page17

• Marriage among the mentally disabled

  There is little doubt that the mentally disabled have the fundamental right to marry and have children, yet how to go about it confounds parents and caregivers

  • By Lin Mei-chun / STAFF REPORTER
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  "I like tall, pretty girls with long hair and nicely-shaped faces," says Wu Shih-cheng (吳世正), talking about his ideal woman. "And she has to wear jeans ... just like the singers on TV."

  Then, getting more specific, he mentions a possibility but quickly dismisses her. "Shin-ying is too talkative. I prefer the quiet type," he says, stuttering as he eagerly presses on to describe how he would approach a woman if he did fancy her. "I'd greet her gently or write her a note."

  Wu is a round-faced, young-looking man with uneven teeth. He is pale and a little chubby, and he tends to scratch his head while talking. Wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, he hardly looks his age, 35-years old. He was born prematurely and his brain was partially damaged during the delivery, causing his mental disability.

  

  He is single, and always has been.

  "I haven't thought about marriage. And if I liked someone, I'd be too embarrassed to let her know, and my mom said I had to wait until my physical condition got better."

  Wu is one of 30 students at Taipei's Children Are Us Foundation (CAUF,喜憨兒文教基金會), which provides care and vocational training for mentally disabled people aged over 16. According to CAUF statistics, more than 400,000 people in Taiwan have a mental disability caused by difficult labor, diseases, genetic abnormality, accidents, or environmental pollution. That figure accounts for nearly 2 percent of Taiwan's population.

  Most organizations in Taiwan for the mentally disabled focus on programs that teach work skills and life skills while assigning lower priority to preparation for marriage or having children. This is mostly due to the challenge of instilling a firm understanding of the long-term responsibilities inherent in such commitments.

  NO EASY ANSWER

  Yet just like anyone else, people like Wu feel the need for relationships, the laughter of a girlfriend, the reassuring embrace of a boyfriend, the loving commitment of a mate. But parents, experts and care providers are at a loss on how to successfully tackle the issue, especially when considering the children of such relationships.

  "I hope she can get married one day if she can find someone who is willing to take care of her," says Mr Chen, a salesman whose 20-year old daughter Chen Tzu-ying (陳姿穎) has epilepsy and as a result is slightly mentally disabled. "I don't mind if she marries someone with a similar physical disability, but then the marriage would demand a lot of assistance from us."

  Though he seldom discusses the topic of marriage with his daughter, Chen senses that it will be a long time before she can tie the knot. "She is very forgetful. She needs a lot of reminders in her everyday activities. She has to be able to take good care of herself before anything else," he says.

  Tsu-ying's appearance is neat, sweet and innocent and it is not until she speaks that there is any evidence of a mental disability. Obviously submissive to her family's opinions, she starts almost every sentence with "my sister said" or "my father said."

  "I'd like to get married one day if I can find somebody who can attend to me like the way my sister or my father does. They said they would help me look around."

  When talking about Chi-wen, a male admirer of hers who is also mentally disabled, she says, "Chi-wen once told me he wanted to do `that,' but I told him I couldn't because I was too young for `that.' I told him that if you insist, you'll have to tell my sister first."

  Asked if it felt good to know that someone was interested in her, she replies, "Yeah. But I have not seen him for a long time, and my sister said she would find someone for me [to marry]. She worries I will meet someone bad."

  While Tsu-ying seems patient -- or almost resigned -- in her attitude and pursuit of marriage, another of her fellow students, Tsao En-sheng (曹恩昇), almost wishes he'd been married yesterday. "I need to get married because my mom wants me to, so she can have grandchildren one day. And I also want to have a wife, because no-one can live alone. Then we can take care of each other."

  Tsao is a 28-year old man, whose brain was damaged due to fevers when he was a child. Lately, he says, his desire to get married has grown stronger. He likes to look at women on the street and recently took a fancy to a woman introduced by his mom. "She was healthy, from the countryside," he says. "I chatted with her briefly. I kind of liked her. But I have not heard from her again."Tsao's mom says it is difficult for her son to develop a relationship because of his sense of inferiority and a lack of proper channels. "I wish more match-making associations could be found in society, or even that teachers at the foundation could take on the role [of matchmakers]," she says.

  Tsao has noticed her son's increasing interest in the opposite sex but says she has had little luck in urging him to interact more. "He has experienced prejudices," she says, "both in the employment market and in interpersonal relationships."

  For most people, puberty brings a heightened curiosity of the opposite sex. It is a time of intense exploration, fickle interest and rewarding successes and failures. However, it seems to mark the beginning of a nightmare for parents of the mentally disabled, who face a slew of problems as their children grapple with the nature of adolescence.

  Relationships and marriage, not to mention sex, are thorny issues for parents of the mentally disabled because they believe their children need someone to look after them. It is difficult to find successful examples of marriage or commitment between the mentally disabled. Despite attempts, sources for this story could not suggest couples that would be regarded as happily married.

  However, most parents of the mentally disabled are anxious for their children to get married, a situation that makes some special-education workers suspicious of motives. "To continue the family line (傳宗接代) is still considered a primary responsibility for Chinese parents, but that is not a good reason to push their mentally disabled children into marriage," says Denise Lai (賴美智), director of the Teaching Department at the First Social Welfare Foundation (第一社會福利基金會). "Parents take a risk to encourage marriage because they want to have grandchildren, or because they want someone to take care of their children in the future. The critical question is, are these youths ready for relationships or marriages. Pre-marital preparation is much more vital."

  Mentally disabled youngsters are rarely exposed to accurate information about sex, Lai says. They receive sex education mainly through the media, which frequently disseminates conflicting messages. This can easily lead to confusion and inappropriate sexual responses. Incidents, such as students touching each other's genitals, do happen at the foundation.

  According to Lai, education is needed before there is any headlong rush into marriage. "To produce offspring is not the only purpose of a marriage, nor should we expect our partner to serve only as a caretaker. A successful marriage entails clear understanding of its meaning and responsibility, and how to maintain it."

  Facing tremendous obstacles in finding a match for their children, many parents of the mentally disabled go overseas in search of "foreign brides" (外籍新娘) for their sons, or seek to marry off their daughters to elderly veterans.

  Marriages that exist only for the sake of having children frequently end tragically. Some brides run away after they realize their husbands are mentally retarded; some couples keep having children because they do not know how to use contraceptives.

  "Preparation before marriage is absolutely necessary. Parents need to make sure their children are mature enough to assume such responsibilities. Evaluations must be done to find out if they are self-sufficient financially, or if both sets of parents are supportive of the decision. Even so, marriage should be an affair between the couple, rather than a duty for parents," Lai says.

  Thorough preparation, education and assessments doesn't mean that the mentally disabled should be deprived of their right to marriage or having children. Mrs Tu, an insurance company clerk, whose 25-year old son is also a student at the foundation, suggested "community families" could be one solution to the problem.

  In some countries the mentally disabled reside in "community homes" where social workers pay visits on a periodic basis to offer help with daily routines or to assist with emotional or physical problems.

  "These children just need professional counseling and someone to assuage their stress regularly," Tu says.

  However, before such a community is established in Taiwan, more can be done, Lai says. For instance, sex education should be taught to the mentally disabled in a more systematic way. "There is an extreme demand for such sex educators in Taiwan," she says. "Sexual desires are inborn. It is cruel to suppress the sexual needs of these children."
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