Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity

Really mixed feelings about this one-- the idea was great, the interviews remarkable, but the personal conclusions the author drew were not usually logical or consistent. I think it would have been a much stronger book if he'd left more of himself out and not ended each section with his sometimes

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wishy-washy summations. He's clearly a gifted nonfiction writer, but this book couldn't decide if it was presenting the truth or bending it to suit a worldview.

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This book is a real eye opener when it comes to understanding identity, gender, inheritance, parenthood, disability, mental illness, and human rights. Humanity comes in a variety of shapes and sizes and the author manages to crystallize this point in almost every sub-topic he discusses. I would

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recommend this book to anyone who even remotely thinks about being a parent or working with children.

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An amazing book. Solomon's brilliant conceptualization of "horizontal identities" cuts across all the ways we compartmentalize, justify and rationalize one kind of difference against another, and explores the great challenges and experiences of parenting children with these identities. Every

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chapter, each one about children with a particular horizontal identity (dwarfism, schizophrenia, prodigies, etc.) synthesizes social theories, biological research, and anecdotal material from the interviews Solomon did over a decade with hundreds of parents. He pulls it all together together neatly between the first chapter, "Son," where he describes his own horizontal identities (dyslexia and homosexuality) and the final chapter, "Father," where he brings in his experience in becoming a parent. There is so much compassion and and a desire to foment a deep, profound understanding in Solomon's work. I read a library copy, then went out and bought it to own, and to lend out/proselytize to others. This is an important, fascinating, and very compelling book; Solomon is articulate, lucid and eloquent. I would love to see him awarded a Nobel Prize (if they awarded one to nonfiction) for this beautiful book.

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Far From the Tree is a weighty tome of 900+ pages (200 of which are notes and index). Despite its length and heftiness, it is well-worth the read. The author spends the opening chapter explaining how identities shape and form our relationships (horizontal and vertical relationships). He writes

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about his own identity as a dyslexic and figuring out his sexual identity (gay). In the remaining chapters he covers the experiences parents had in parenting children who are deaf, disabled, dwarfs, committed crimes, schizophrenic, autistic, and prodigies. While the chapters may seem random and divergent there is an underlying theme of parenting a child who is different than the mainstream.

The book is well researched and attainable. It is also clear how much time the author took to build relationships with the families he profiles. This shines through in the care he takes in writing about sensitive moments within the families.

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I found this book absolutely fascinating. So much so, in fact, that I bought a paperback print copy to keep in my library (I listened to the 40 hour audible book) to be used as a reference book.

Towards the end of the book, Solomon uses the following language to describe what I found to be the

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thesis of the book: "That presumptive caul of negativity [that homosexuality--or any other culturally perceived barrier--is a barrier to parental acceptance and unconditional love] is onerous. Some people trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love [gay couples' love] exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones" (pp 699-700).

This book exposes a myth that the parents of children with physical, mental, emotional, and cultural differences must thereby be considered "saints" rather that simply parents in love with their children. Over and over, Solomon interviews parents and children who say they would not change who they are if they could and who love the members of their families because of (not in spite of) who they are.

The audio book is read by the author, which I found interesting. His pronunciation of certain words was quite different! But just as listening to a singer-songwriter perform their own works, hearing Solomon place the emphasis where, as author, it was written to be made the listening all the more enjoyable.

It is worth the read...or listening!

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Recommended to me by someone who has always felt "different" and is now thinking they are on the autism spectrum. This is a very thick book, and quite daunting. I started at the beginning and felt the author was relating everything he said to his own situation. But the world isn't all about him. I

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was never going to finish this book, so my advisor told me to just read the chapter on autism (my child's disability).. I actually jumped to the chapter on Multiple Serious Disabilities, and felt a lot of emotional similarity between my situation and those parents. Then I read the statistic that '85% of people with mental retardation live with or under the supervision of their parents' and felt profoundly distressed that my desire for having a life of my own will either never be met before I die or will give me permanent guilt for being unable to accomplish what most others do. Typing this now, I see that I ignored the qualifier 'or under the supervison of'. But if that means hiring staff to do the day-to-day care, then the statistic is meaningless in terms of identifying the commitment required of the parents.
Next I read the Autism chapter. This chapter was so dissatisfying because it tried to address children all across the spectrum, and presented as many different viewpoints as possible (tho not every possible 'alternative' treatment). There was no way for me to get a sense of what to expect for my particular adult child. It brought up feelings of anger at those who try to say that autistics should be allowed to remain who they are and not be changed. That might be fine for those who are able to communicate, but I can feel the distress my son experiences in not being able to express his pain in any effective manner, or to be stuck in a pattern that he can't move away from to do a desired activity.
Before reading the book, I viewed the video with the same title, so I feel I got an overview of parenting those with dwarfism (which might have included my son as a midget if he hadn't received growth hormone) and schizophrenia. I was distracted during the episode on childrren who are murderers, which is just as well as I think I would have had a hard time trying to see that as normal.
I guess this review is all about me. Fitting for a book that I first thought was all about the author.

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Summary: Solomon's thesis is that there are horizontal and vertical identities. Vertical identities are those that generally don't change from parent to child - like race, religion, and ethnicity. Parents as well as outsiders are generally comfortable with children staying within these vertical

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boundaries. But when children exit these boundaries, everybody becomes a little uncomfy. Horizontal identities is one way to cross out of the vertical boundary. A horizontal identity is one in which the child conforms to a cultural identity which differs from that of the parent - such as mental illness, deafness, LGBTQ, Transexuality, Autism, Down Sydrome, etc. Several of these, such as LGBTQ and deafness have strongly developed communities of people with the related identities. Often, the parents have to learn to become a member-from-the-outside of these communities in order to support their children.

Review: Amazing book. There were some parts that were difficult to read - such as the ones about children of rape victims and crime - but those sections were also very poignant. Solomon did a fantastic job of covering a large variety of topics while keeping to the same thesis, and not sounding repetitive. It's possible the book could have been shortened a bit if there were fewer individual interviews, but I liked having so many examples. It shows that no two individuals have the same story. One criticism I have (especially of dwarfism, deafness, and Autism) the people interviewed were more often than not exceptional members of the community who had resources (great intelligence/resourcefulness, money, education) than the average person would have. So stories in those sections seemed a bit skewed.

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Brilliant insight into different forms of parenting. Confronting and challenging a must read.

The final lines of Solomon’s beautifully-written narrative about families who come to love the exceptional children they didn’t know they wanted, perfectly describes the feelings and moral quandaries I encountered throughout its 702 pages: “Sometimes I had thought the heroic parents in this

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book were fools, enslaving themselves to a life’s journey with their alien children, trying to breed identity out of misery. I was startled to learn that my research had built me a plank, and that I was ready to join them on their ship.”

In the final chapter, the author becomes a father, creating a family that, he notes, would not have existed 50 years ago. In part because it was considered morally wrong, and also in part because of science. Without scientific advancements and societal changes many of the families Solomon writes about wouldn’t exist. But despite many of the advances that have made these exceptional families possible, these families face many hurdles that range from receiving little support for their autistic child to living with the stigma of raising a child conceived in rape.

This plank that the author writes was built for him from his research also becomes a plank for the reader. As I read about parents who came to accept that their children weren’t the ones they imagined themselves having but made it their life’s mission to help these children become the best people they could be, I felt it wrong to wish for a child that wasn’t deaf or autistic or a prodigy. When you read these families’ stories of extreme love and hardship so closely intertwined that the joys and sorrows of parenting are felt so much more intensely, you can’t help but feel that you should be ready to join that ship.

The wide conception of parenting is that parents are responsible for raising children who can one day live independently, contribute to society, and produce children of their own. But parents of children who will never be able to meet these expectations quickly learn to redefine success, focusing on an identity that is more closely an expression of who their children are.

In each chapter, Solomon focuses on a different horizontal identity. He defines horizontal identities as independently divergent; they are inherent or acquired traits that are foreign to a child’s progenitors. These identities are anchored between the chapters titled “Son” and “Father.” In these two chapters, the author writes about himself and the connection he feels with these families’ struggles, being a gay man who suffers from serious clinical depression. Solomon begins the book with the statement, “There is no such thing as reproduction.” While two people who decide to have a baby believe they are “braiding themselves together,” they are actually just producing a “stranger,” and the more “alien” the stranger, the harder it is to accept him. The conception that by having a baby we will live on forever is a comforting prospect for parents-to-be, but all it really does is formulate fantasies that will most likely be shattered.

In “Father,” Solomon connects parenthood to loss because the act of having a child means that a great deal for the parents is lost, mainly the fantasies they might have had for their child. After fathering a son to raise with his partner, Solomon expresses that he felt sorry for what is always lost when a gay couple decides to have children: “I would never see what might come of mixing John’s genes with my own.” Despite believing in “production” as opposed to “reproduction,” the author couldn’t help feeling that two people who love each other should have equal claim to their child.

The ten horizontal identities described in the book make it clear that right and wrong are categories that are just as limiting as pro-choice and pro-life, Liberal and Conservative. The way these parents love their children is situational, because experience is what dictates how they should raise them. Should parents of severely deaf children choose to have them get Cochlear implants or learn to speak instead of learning to sign? Would parents be better off aborting a pregnancy if prenatal diagnosis revealed the child had dwarfism or Down syndrome? How should a family cope with a child who has become a criminal or is transgender? Most of these families stated that they wouldn’t want their children to be any other way, and if they did it was mainly because it would mean an easier life. But in the end, they were happy to have had choices, however limited.

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When it comes to having children, Andrew Solomon doesn’t believe in reproduction. He says the word implies making a copy of something. He does believe in production, recognizing that every child is a new, different, individual person. He acknowledges that children do share some traits with their

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parents, which he calls vertical identity. They may have some traits different from their families but shared by peers. These he calls horizontal identity. He is gay. His parents are straight. Gay is a horizontal identity.

In FAR FROM THE TREE, he interviews people who have a child in a horizontal identity. The categories are deaf, dwarf, Down’s Syndrom, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disability, prodigies, children conceived through rape, crime, and transgender. In each chapter, he interviews both the families as well as individuals in the category and provides information about causes and treatment. Many of these theories have changed over the years.

Children who don’t resemble their parents are more likely to be abused. He states. “Prehistoric societies were cruel to those who were different, but did not segregate them; their care was the responsibility of their families. Post-industrial societies created benevolent institutions for the disables, who were often whisked away at the first sign of anomaly.”

Solomon compares, in a nonjudgmental way, not only families with children having the same condition, he contrasts the way different conditions affect both the child and the family. For example, deaf children can live in families where one or both parents and other family members are also deaf. He discusses the benefits of oral speech versus sign language, the pros and cons of cochlear implants, and whether mainstreaming the children or having them with other deaf children is more beneficial to the child. Should they live at home or with peers? He mentions many groups do find local communities of peers. Some, for example dwarfs, are much more isolated and asks what difference that makes. He points out the advantage of on-line communities to help children who are different develop contact with peers.

When discussing dwarfs, he writes about providing surgery to help the child grow taller and in the case of children with Down’s Syndrome, the use of tests to determine whether a fetus has DS and whether or not the fetus should be aborted. In all these cases, he raises the question of if these conditions are eliminated or ameliorated, what message does it give to a person who is living with condition? Should severely disabled children be kept alive by medical means? Are children with disabilities less valuable than other members of society?

He asks who has the problem, the child or society and quotes British academic Michael Oliver who wrote “Disability has nothing to do with the body; it is a consequence of social oppression.” Children who don’t resemble their parents are more likely to be abused. He asks if the child should adjust to the world or if the world should adjust to the child. He mentions many groups do find local communities of peers. Some, for example dwarfs, are much more isolated and asks what difference that makes.

He quotes Simon Baron-Cohen:”Autism is both a disability and a difference. We need to find ways of alleviating the disability while respecting and valuing the difference.” A deaf child will develop other senses to compensate for the loss of hearing.

He points out positive aspects of some conditions, e.g., DS children are usually very sweet and trusting.

He presents many viewpoints, both medical and via family interviews. This results in some contradictions such as why autism is more common now.

The timing of the onset of the condition creates different experiences. A child with Down’s Syndrome is often identified at birth. Schizophrenia usually doesn’t develop until the mid to late teens. The parent and child are faced with dealing with a major change for which they are usually unprepared. Transgender children may know before they start school that they are the wrong gender. Should the parent support a son’s request to wear dresses to school? Should they allow surgery before the child reaches puberty to keep the child from developing the characteristics of their current body?

While most conditions are caused in the child, in the case of children who are conceived via rape, it is the mother who provides the difference.

Children who commit crimes are often removed from their homes and institutionalized. Whether the child receives treatment or punishment is largely decided by the community-at-large as it opts for retribution or prevention. Many communities blame the parents.

Parents who don’t want to label their children may find the child is not able to receive services unless they are labeled.

While most people don’t think of prodigies as a problem, the way the child is raised can have a profound effect on the family. Like other families with a horizontal identity child, the child may receive more or less attention than his siblings. Solomon focuses on musical prodigies and has examples of parents pushing their children as a way to fame and fortune as well as letting the children determine what they want to do with their gift.

He asks what do parents need from their children and how can a horizontal identity child fill that niche.

At the end of the book, he observes that in almost all cases, if the parent of a horizontal identify child could choose, they would pick their own child.

FAR FROM THE TREE Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity is more than 700 pages, plus extensive notes, bibliography, and index. I think it could have been at least 100 pages shorter without losing its point. It raised a lot of issues I had never thought about previously and provided a lot of information to consider. I would recommend it to all readers who have ever met someone who is different from themselves

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Wonderfully written, well researched!

A work of pure genius. Couldn't put it down. Jaw-dropping stories, interspersed with obviously careful scholarship. I believe Dwight Garner called it "essential reading," which it is that.

An exploration of families in which children have "horizontal" identities that distance them from their parents - Deaf, dwarfism, autism, prodigies, Down syndrome, mental illness, conceived in rape, criminal behavior, and more. The author is a gay Jewish man whose parents weren't really comfortable

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being Jewish and not happy about his gayness, which opened his eyes to other situations. For me, who never wanted children, both interesting and off-putting, but fascinating to see the different choices and outcomes. I think the section on prodigies was the most eye opening for me. There's a bit too much of the "I never thought I'd say this but now that we've had this experience, I wouldn't trade it" and some of the experiences sound really awful, to be honest. I'm usually skeptical about that.

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A book mostly about what it’s like for parents and children who are very different from each other, though there’s a bit about deaf of deaf people and how their experiences are distinct from deaf of hearing people. Solomon covers mostly differences that are widely understood as negative (e.g.,

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children with Downs syndrome, pervasive disabilities, schizophrenia, and severe autism), as well as dwarfism, criminality, children who are transgender, prodigies, and some on his own experience as the gay child of heterosexual parents who eventually decides he wants to parent, knowing that his children will likely be heterosexual. Although most of us want to re-produce key traits when we start down the child-having path, he suggests, most parents that he talks to (though not all, and he notes that he gets a biased sample) say they wouldn’t change the children they actually have.

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Meticulously researched (in fact, there are over 100 pages of Notes at the end and a Bibliography of almost 100 pages).

This book opened my eyes. I thought I was an accepting, nonjudgemental person. In many ways, however, I was prejudice against certain groups without realizing it. I am much more

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mindful of others after reading Andrew Solomon's work. Chapters include Deaf, Dwarfs, Down Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia (how difficult for the child and parents!), Prodigies, Rape (continuing the pregnancy or aborting, loving or not loving the child conceived in rape), Crime (what do you do when your child is a criminal, perhaps a murderer), and Transgender (I had no idea the suicide rate for transgender people, when not supported, was this high).

My daughter recommended this book and I highly recommend it to others, particularly educators, healthcare workers, social workers, and psychiatrists. But I also encourage the general population to read this important book. It might open your eyes as it did mine and help us all live in a more accepting, supportive society.

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Pretty much just read the anecdotes.....

excellent!!

Important book about identity, challenge and disability. Each new chapter was engrossing and illuminating. I don't think I'll look at people who are "other", or their parents, in the same way, ever again.

Sorry - the folks who need to read this won't - it's too intimidating. And I don't need to. After reading the blurb, some reviews, the first few pages, and the last few paragraphs, I can tell that it's meaningless to me. *Of course* I love all my children as individuals, no matter what challenges

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they face or how raising them has challenged me.

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Solomon explores horizontal identities (peer alliance) and how parents & children relate when there is no vertical identity (family heredity alliance). His exploration arose out of his own alienation from his parents due to sexual identity differences.

A brilliant meditation on identity and childhood. It's filled with explorations that are alternatively hilarious and heartbreaking. The strength and determination of many the children and their parents will amaze you.

As an exploration of what Solomon calls "horizontal identity" it's valuable for

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anyone to read as a way of understanding how we become who we are. The tribes of people who share things that their families may not be able to share are described with kindness and compassion.

The discussions with Dylan Klebold's parents is worth the price of the book alone.

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Very thought provoking book. Lots of questions are raised that are not possible to answer in any general way. Each case has to be considered individually. It's about horizontal culture as opposed to vertical, genetics vs environment. Raises questions as to whether women would abort if they knew the

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child had Down's syndrome, or autism, or deafness. Difficult questions with no "right" answer. I'm loving it!

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Andrew Solomon lays out his arguments in a way that is so readable and absorbing. This is a delicious read about the challenges within many groups of folks facing challenges within themselves and within their parenting.