Seeing children as brand extensions drives parents to reject or hide disabled children

Evidence

This same inability to see children as autonomous beings is part of the reason why, for so long, disabled children were hidden away in cruel institutions. If a double that reflects well on them is what many parents are after, then disability arrives as an unwelcome interruption to those best-laid plans. Or, in today’s language, if your kid is your brand extension, then having a child who challenges social standards of normalcy might mean that your whole personal brand is in crisis. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 648

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘child as brand extension’ is the same doubling mechanism Klein tracks in the political Mirror World — the child as a double that must reflect well on the parent. This is core to the book’s central device.