"Arthur Miller's youngest son, Daniel, was institutionalized. He was born with Down syndrome in 1966 and sent to Southbury Training School, in Conneticut, when he was about 4 years old. Miller never once mentioned him in his memoir Timebends, and Miller's New York Times obituary said not one word about him, naming three children, rather than four.
Erik Erikson, the storied developmental psychologist, also put his son with Down syndrome in an institution. He and his wife, Joan, told their other three children that their brother died shortly after he was born in 1944. They eventually told all three the truth, but not at the same time. Their oldest son learned first. That must have been quite a secret to keep.
Pearl S. Buck, the Nobel Prize winner for literature and author of The Good Earth, institutionalized her 9-year-old daughter Carol, likely in 1929. But Buck was different: She regularly visited her daughter, and 21 years later had the courage to write about her experience in The Child Who Never Grew."
~ Jennifer Senior
"The Ones We Sent Away"
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