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An association dedicated to improving the welfare of mentally challenged people urged parents on Tuesday to think twice before arranging for their mentally challenged sons to marry women from abroad.
The Parents Association for Persons with Intellectual Disability found that in recent years, an increasing number of parents are arranging marriages so their mentally challenged sons will have lifelong companions and caregivers who will bear their sons children.
Liu Jia-chi, the vice director of the association, said these parents help raise the grandchildren born from the union. However, while most parents wish for grandchildren to carry on the family name, the kids from these kinds of marriages are expected to help their mother and eventually take over in the primary caregiving of their mentally challenged father after the grandparents have passed away.
The association estimated that around 60 to 70 percent of foreign women who married Taiwanese men with mental disabilities choose to run away or return to their home countries with their kids, according to the association's secretary-general Lin Hui-fang.
Liu said that in many cases, major conflicts arise because the spouses have no idea of their prospective husband's condition as they were not informed during prenuptial discussions. Sometimes, the women are told that their prospective husbands are too simple, honest or not too smart.
PAPID Deputy Secretary-general Sun I-hsin said that some foreign brides could not deal with their spouses' condition and refuse to have sex with their husbands. Some even resort to beating their mentally retarded husbands, Sun added.
An association for mentally handicapped persons in Taichung County reported a case wherein a mother found out after her foreign daughter-in-law had run back to Cambodia with US$5,000 that the woman never slept with her mentally challenged son in the five years they were married.
"Parents are willing to spend their whole lives accompanying their mentally challenged children, but they know they cannot be with their kids forever, so they are eager to find their sons a companion who can also take over as caregiver," Liu said.
However, parents have to understand that marriage is not equal to simple companionship, Liu stressed, noting that those with mental disabilities may not clearly understand the definition of marriage and the responsibilities that come with it.
Moreover, additional problems could arise since many of the offspring of such unions are born with mental disabilities or other health issues, Liu said.
Also, if one's father is mentally challenged and his or her mother is from overseas, the child will very likely not grow up in a good educational environment, said Liu.
The PAPID stressed that instead of seeking foreign brides as a solution to long-term caregiving, the government should instead take the responsibility to set up a good social welfare system that will make sure mentally challenged people will be well cared for, and ease their parents' worries.
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