The Mother of the Child in Question

The Mother of the Child in Question, written by Doris Lessing, is a short story from 1988. The story is about a social worker, named Stephen Bentley, and his attempt to persuade a Pakistani family to send their youngest daughter to a special school because she is mentally retarded. The family in question is the Khans, an immigrant family consisting of Mr. & Mrs. Khan, their son Hassan, their daughter Shireen and two older daughters whom we do not hear anything specific about in the story. Mrs. Khan, the mother, will not realize that her daughter is not a normal girl, so she does everything she can to convince the social worker, Stephen Bentley, that there is nothing wrong with her daughter.

The family lives in a very poorly milieu in England. It is described as a lowly ranked social area where the hallways for example are described as urine smelling. The buildings are described as poor block buildings with many apartments where everything is grey concrete. Generally, these milieus take place in ghettos. Even though the family lives in a poor place, they still keep it clean and presentable with cramped furniture.

Steven Bentley, the social worker, is the main character in the story. The story is told through his eyes, thoughts and observations. He has been assigned the case of the Khan family, and has made preparations by phoning Mr. Khan the day before he shows up. As mentioned earlier, he wants to get Shireen into a special school for mentally retarded children. Hassan Khan, a young twelve year old boy; he welcomes Bentley in the door and later turns out to be present as an interpreter and representative of his father. His father did not show up for this encounter, even though he had promised to on the phone. Shireen, who is “the child in question”, is ten years old but has the mind of a two to five-year old child. Because of her condition, she does not really have contact to the outside world, not even her own family. She seems only to really focus on her brother, and pretty much ignore the conversation between the adults, which she probably does not understand at all. Mrs. Khan does not speak English so well, but she is a proud and stubborn woman. The only thought she has, is that Shireen must go to a normal school like other children and will hear none of this nonsense about a special school.

One of the main themes is the difference between western and eastern culture. There are many elements which are foreign to the western culture, such as clothing and the family pattern. Even when Hassan is far from the oldest of the children, he is the representative of his father which makes him more powerful than his sisters. This is a typical thing in the eastern culture, where the boy is more valuable than the girl because he is the stronger and smarter according to them. We still see that Hassan is not comfortable about this by his faking smile. He smiles constantly as a sine he must do. “Where is Mr. Khan?” asked Stephen of Mrs. Khan, who nodded commandingly at her son. Hassan at once said, “No he cannot come, he is at work”. We see that the mother is giving Hassan a sign of what he has to answer, as if he was told what to say so he could be prepared before the social worker came. It also shows us that Hassan is a second-generation immigrant, which makes him seeing the western culture more acceptable than his parents, who are first-generation immigrants. They way Mrs. Khan tries to get Bentley convinced, about that her daughter is normal, is by trying to get Shireen to count her biscuits and showing of her color book. But Bentley can clearly see that it is not working, and tries to figure out what the reason for this huge resistance from the mother is all about. He finally finds the answer and rejects the other thoughts he had about the mother’s reason of her resistance. At first he thought it could be money issues, as the school just got an entrance fee. The second thought he had was that they maybe did not want to let any of their girls get educated. But it could not be that either, as the older sisters has gone to school. The answer he finds is, when Hassan explains that Shireen must go to the “big school”, where he and his sisters have taken their education. At this point Bentley realizes that it is not money or maybe even not the culture. The reason is that the mother will simply not let her daughter be marked as a retard. Why she is having this thought can have something to do with their culture. In cultures where Islam is involved, you have to show a very huge respect to the retarded people because it is still one of God’s works, even when it is different from yourself. She is perhaps, therefore, ashamed about that other people, with the same culture, would talk bad about if she was sending her daughter to a special school. It might be that in their culture retarded people would be outcasts from society, something you hide away and do not speak of. It could also be a mother’s love for her child. If she gave in and accepted that her daughter is a retard, she might think of it as herself failing as a mother, not being able to give her fourth and last child the same good life that the rest of her children hopefully are growing up to.

In the end Steven Bentley is imagining the situation of why Mrs. Khan was resistance of her daughter’s condition. When he finds the answer, he is really happy about what a mother she is. The finally conclusion makes him thinking that Mrs. Khan is doing the right thing. We can see that he is on her side “… proud she had won yet another victory against those busybodies who would class her Shireen as stupid”.