Abstract

This article explores the current parenting culture, particularly the promotion of competitive and excessive parenting, as an important background issue against which the debates around pre-natal testing take place. It offers an alternative vision of parenting, relying on care ethics, which sees parenting as a relationship, rather than a job. A relationship that should change a parent’s understanding of what is valuable in life. Parenting should not be about moulding the ‘perfect child’ but being open to being profoundly changed. The parent–child with a disability relationship offers particular opportunities to find new meanings and values in life. This analysis is offered as another dimension to the debates over pre-natal testing. It is not intended as an argument against such testing, but rather raises concerns about some of the broader attitudes around it.