Every child suffers sometimes from a feeling of inferiority. He is so much smaller and weaker than the grown-ups who control his play and his work that he feels uncomfortably helpless against their authority, which to him seems often to be exercised in an arbitrary and unkind way.
There are times when this consciousness of being little and weak is so overwhelming that the child is bound to do something to convince himself of his own powerfulness.
It is then that he becomes naughty. For the very easiest way to command the attention of his mother, and the other adults who are with him, is by being naughty. Good, he is left alone. The grown-ups go on with their own occupations. He feels neglected. At most he is mildly praised. “Johnnie is a nice quiet boy to-day.” But this is very different from the attention he commands when he is naughty. He defies authority. For a short time he becomes a despot, ruling the grown-ups who usually rule him. His sensation of power is intensely enjoyable. And the more disturbance he makes in the nursery life the deeper is his satisfaction. Of course, he is sorry afterwards. But his sorrow is not really for the first period of successful rebellion, but for the following time after his power fails.
Now, it is very important for the mother to understand this. The real problem is to minimise as much as can be of the child’s enjoyment of naughtiness.
Any unwisdom on the mother’s part such as her being too emotionally concerned, indulging in nagging or violent anger, may have very serious results. Inevitably the child feels as he sees his mother’s tears and want of control, “I have caused this.” Instead of being weak he is master of his mother. That is why usually he is good after he has been naughty.
But this kind of nursery behaviour is disastrous to the child’s character.
Let me tell you a rather striking story to illustrate this. A young boy, very naughty, was sent to bed. His mother, greatly troubled, went some hours later to his room. He was kneeling, praying. She thought he was asking God to forgive him. But this was what she heard: “Please, dear God, forgive my bad mummy for being so unkind to poor little Freddy.” The boy grew up in the most unfortunate way. I cannot give the details and there were, of course, several causes. Yet certainly his character suffered the first wrong in the nursery from an unwise emphasising by his mother of his own importance.
The naughty child is always the child over-occupied with thoughts of himself. And his feelings are unhealthily important to him just because he finds himself for some cause at a disadvantage. Parents, unconsciously, but very foolishly, emphasise their children’s inferiority; they speak of their weakness, tell them they are too little to do this or that, never realising the danger of what they are doing.
Children must not be subjected to conditions of emotional stress, which increase unnecessarily their inevitable consciousness of inferiority in an adult world. If the parents do not find out and remedy the cause of these feelings (which they ought to know are invariably present whenever a child is naughty) and provide an expression by which the desired power is gained in a right way, let me warn them that they are dangerously limiting their children’s chance of a successful and happy life. By connecting pleasure with bad conduct, they are certainly, though they do not know it, making the way easy for every kind of future bad conduct.
The fate of all children is decided in the nursery; criminals are made there as well as saints and heroes.
In the life of every girl and every boy there come times when they must, and should, free themselves from the thraldom of the home.
This may sound hard to parents, who desire almost always to keep their children in tutelage, and cannot often even think of them except as belonging to the home and to themselves.
Yet the young must rebel, must escape from this too-closely-binding yoke of love. They have to break away from the moorings of safety; to adventure; to find a place for themselves; to get into the world and to establish their own lives as women and men.
We should hear much less of trouble between parents and children if fathers, and especially mothers, could be made to understand that the conflict with their growing boys and girls is not a personal conflict; that it has nothing, or at least very little, to do with the actual situation, and is not directly dependent on anything that either the parents or the children may do or may not do. And this is comforting to parents—it does not mean that their children love them less.
No, the conflict is based on an inescapable psychological opposition. It is the necessity of the young to escape from the tyranny of the old.
The parent’s hand is needed to steady the child, while it is unable to stand firmly on its own feet or to guide its own steps; but as the child grows older, it must learn to walk alone. If the mother persists in holding out a hand, never lets the child fall down, she destroys a proper independence and the hand held-out-too-long is used to satisfy the mother’s selfish desire; to give her the pleasure she gains from the child’s dependence on herself, and not because of any need of the child for help.
You will see the application of this illustration.
Many mothers prolong the years of childish helplessness and absence of initiative because they do not want their children to grow up. Especially they check the boy’s or the girl’s independent feelings and impulses by persistently guiding them.
There is an immense, but usually unrecognised, selfishness in the apparently devoted parent. Such devotion ignores the right of the young to discover for themselves.
The separation between parent and child needs to be more than a mere separation in space. Sending a boy or a girl away to school or elsewhere does not separate it from the home ties; often such a separation but serves to bind them more fixedly. What is needed is a psychological separation—an emotional freedom from the too-crippling dependence of childhood. There is the need to take the home standards and compare them with other standards of the world; the getting rid of the old excessive reverence for the parents. They, too, must be criticised and judged.
This process of liberation is difficult and very painful to the child; that is why so often there is rebellion and unkindness. And the danger is greater because, at this period, the boy or the girl is so easily discouraged, turns back so readily with kindness to the old safety. And if this is countenanced by the parents, who continue to offer a too-protective affection, the character of the boy or the girl is weakened so that in after years they will not be able to meet the necessities of adult action.
The too fond mother or father perpetuates the childhood of their sons and daughters. They are a far more real danger to their children than neglectful or careless parents.
It is worthwhile considering some of the reasons why parents do too much for their children; are too careful to keep them bound to the home and within the protection of parental love.
The parents who have failed in satisfying their own desires see in their children a new opportunity. They hope for vicarious satisfaction. And for this reason, rather than for the reasons of unselfish love which they believe rule their conduct, they will sacrifice themselves so that their children may achieve what they have failed in gaining. They are to hand down and maintain their name, to keep in the world their family, and all that seems of value in themselves—all that would be lost by their approaching extinction.
If we stop to think, we shall see how common and easy it is for parents to use their children as instruments of satisfaction. Wherever one or other parent is unhappy, suffering under some unsatisfied desire, they seek to satisfy these desires through their children. Do we not know that the wife, and sometimes also the husband, not happy in their own marriage concentrate their hopes of a satisfying life on their children. The mother wants her daughters to be literally, wholly devoted to her; she loves again in her love for her sons; or the father compensates himself with his devotion to his daughters, while he seeks to satisfy his desire for power by completely directing the life of his sons.
All this is quite wrong. It breaks the power of the young; turns them into dutiful automatons, instead of rebellious adventurers. Constantly thwarted, too much protected, they become necessarily less capable of effort, with a weakened power for action. The model boy or girl of parents and schoolmasters is almost always a failure in life.
Such parents love their children too selfishly and too possessively. Seeking emotional relief, they drain for themselves the storehouse of energy which their children ought to preserve for their own lives.
The danger is deep and far reaching, a too great and unhealthy attachment to either parent may, and often does, cause an inability to transfer an adequate share of loyalty and affection from the parent to the wife or husband. It may check the desire to marry. The man’s choice of a life partner is guided by an infantile vision of his idealised mother; and then, after marriage, he will seek from his wife the feelings of a mother. That is, he will want to be helped and mothered instead of wishing to guide and protect.
This is a very frequent cause of unhappiness in marriage.
Strange as this may seem, the true Don Juan owes his incapacity to find satisfaction in love to the fact that he searches unconsciously for what he can never find, the lost features of his childhood’s mother. He is unfaithful to all women because he is faithful to one woman.
Again the girl may feel towards her husband as she did towards her father; she may be too obedient, too uncritical to be a true helpmate; or, and this is much more serious, a too excessive identification with the mother may render difficult and even impossible the right response to love.
It is not too much to say that, wherever there is this over-attachment and persistence of the childhood attitude, or where the conflict to break from the too heavy tyranny is very severe, the whole career and the whole love-history of the adult life is settled and decided—damned and fated to disaster from the start. Indeed the seed of failure, of unhappiness, even of crime and vice, often is set in helpless children by the selfishness and ignorance of over-affectionately helpful parents, whose too much interference, too emotional solicitude, blocks the narrow passes that lead on to open and independent life.
In many homes, where there are children, the father seems a stranger—almost an intruder.
The central figure in the family is the mother. All the details of her life are familiar to the children; she is seen shopping, cooking, looking after the home. The father is a little mysterious; he goes adventuring in the unknown world. He is picturesque and wonderful; an exciting figure that arouses nursery admiration—but he is unnecessary.
At first the mother occupies all the child’s attention. She supplies food, comfort, shelter, teaching and brings happiness to the nursery. She is the first love-object and of supreme importance; the starting point of all those interests of the children which lie outside of themselves.
But the other parent—the superfluous father, comes both as interrupter and friend into this mother-child circle. He plays with the children, opens up new delightful ways of interest, brings the movement that children love. But also he is a disturber. He absorbs the mother, draws her attention and care from the children. He upsets the order and balance of the nursery. He almost dethrones the baby.
Thus at a very early age jealousy of the father begins to stir and unsettle the nursery peace. Usually we either treat this childish jealousy as a joke or refuse to admit its presence, but it is deadly earnest to the child itself. If the mother is capricious, varying in her attentions to her husband and to her children, or if she is over-tender and too demonstratively affectionate, this jealousy may, and indeed, must work great and permanent evil.
You see, it imposes a conflict in the exquisitely responsive child, between the emotions of hate and anger and envy born of jealousy, and the emotions of love and admiration and obedience dependent on a sense of the benefits conferred by the father.
It is the duty of the mother so to balance her favours and her love that the rights of the husband and the children are both maintained, and neither side is tempted to be a monopolist.
For it is not only the children who are jealous of the father. Often the father is jealous of the children. And often he has cause. Some women, when once the child is born, regard their husbands solely as the person for providing money necessary for the maintenance of the home. In any other capacity she has ceased to desire him, frankly he is in the way.
The mother type often ceases, after motherhood, to be the loving mate—the wife. There is so little time for love making in a nursery home. The man becomes a superfluity, his demands tend to be delegated to holidays that are planned, but do not often occur.
Nature herself seems to condemn the man in his capacity as father. So delicate is the bond which attaches him to the child as compared with the unbreakable bindings which hold the child to the mother; so readily can he be pushed outside the circle of the family, where, as a member apart, he will inevitably seek his own interests and pleasures.
Now, whether this complete severance happens or not, some conflict between the father and his children, especially between father and sons is almost bound to occur. This is a war which is normal and, indeed, inevitable—far more so than any class-war, any opposition and struggle between the nations.
Have we not read of the solitary polygamous father of the past, the Old Man of the Tribe, who drove his sons out of the horde as they grew up, because in his greed he wanted all the women to be his wives? Much time has passed since then, but these emotions are very old and very strong. Pity and the gentler feelings of civilisation enable the father to accept the son as a member of the family and as a companion instead of a rival. But echoes remain of the old instincts of jealous rivalry.
No science is so difficult or so important as psychology. It is because parents do not understand their own minds or the minds of their children that they make such mistakes. They do not see that some jealousy and opposition in family relationships are inevitable and, in fact, useful. Else the child would never grow up, would always be overwhelmed by its parents.
So do not let us be too alarmed if sons oppose fathers, or if fathers are wanting in sympathy with their sons.
Yet it must be remembered finally, on the other side, that the authority of the father has to be maintained. Superfluous in the family, from one point of thought, his influence is nevertheless of the most urgent importance. Without it a too great dependence on self is fostered at too early an age, which sets up an intolerant and unreasoning hatred of all authority and an inability to suffer any kind of restraint.
The father thus needs to preserve his rights and duties within the home. If women have had to fight for the Vote and the open door to the profession, the father may have to fight for the love of his children and the key to the nursery.
He must refuse to be regarded as superfluous.
A few weeks ago a shower of sudden rain brought me for shelter into the house of a kindly stranger, who beckoned me in from the position I had taken under the thickly foliaged trees, bordering her garden. She was a woman who exuded kindness. You know the type—opulent in figure, wholesome and ripe, her face beaming in wide wrinkles of pink flesh.
The sudden generous smile of the big mouth showed her the possessor of a real charm. Her eyes had a blue twinkle that attracted laughter. Quite plainly she would be delightful as a mother. For about her was something that conjured visions of nursery fires, of warm, sweet bread-and-milk, of sugar plums after nasty powders, and of kisses and forgiveness given for childish wrong doing, without any unfair bargaining for repentence.
But this woman had no child. Nature does not always, in this matter, act as intelligently as she might. We all know of many Betsy Trotwoods. On the other hand, we find children lavished wastefully—yes, children, swarming in the cold homes of mothers who do not want them—women without understanding of children or any trace of parental passionateness. Do you not recall many modern prototypes of Mrs. Jellaby?
I felt my bowels ache for this woman with her rich and wasted motherhood. Her opulent affections were lavished not, as they should have been, on the tender warm bodies of little children, but on dogs.
Never have I seen so many dogs: they were placed all over the rather small room. Both easy chairs were occupied by a canine seater. There was a mother with new baby-pups in a lined basket before the great fire. Another dog who was sick was in another basket, wrapped in a shawl, on the other side of the fire. The room was stifling, and had a sick, close, doggy smell. And though I am a lover of dogs, I felt disgusted. I really hated those pampered toys, that snarled and snapped and grumbled at me in the most horrible way. Believe me, I am not exaggerating. You could not speak. The whole room was dogs. Enough! Let us leave them and get on to something of greater value.
It was that thought which caught and gripped my attention. This woman’s unfilled life. I could not forget it: it stayed with me long after I had left the house—a memory not to be obliterated.
She was forlorn among her dogs. It was a tragedy of waste. I have had so many dreams of the perfect mother that I was stung to anger and impatience to find her, at last here, squandering her affections on a canine brood.
The situation was so plain. This woman needed children, if not of her flesh, then adopted and made her own by the rich fullness of her motherhood.
It was a short time after I had found “the perfect mother” thus wasted, that there came into my hands the “White Paper” which gives in full the wise and interesting Report of the Committee on Child Adoption. I knew that here was just the very thing that was wanted. Here was shewn the means by which the motherly childless woman and the motherless child could be brought together.
The desire for child adoption has never been stronger than it is at the present time. But I do not hesitate to say that, in the present absence of any law to regulate and safeguard adoption, the position is so set about with difficulties and so pressed with continuous dangers that the practice ought to be actively discouraged. It is dangerous for the adopter and, what matters even more, it is dangerous for the child.
The emphatic and unanimous decision of the Committee was that there is immediate necessity for a change in the law to make the adoption of children legal in this country. Every one who gave evidence was unanimously in favour of adoption in all cases where, for one reason or another, any child could not have the care of its own parents. It is much better for every child to be brought up in a home than in an institution. Not only is it cheaper, but the child benefits far more. But adoption needs to be regulated and legalised. The child is too precious a possession to leave to anyone to do with as they desire.
The report recommends:—
1. That after obtaining the consent of the real parents and the adopting parents, as well as the consent of the child, if he (or she) is over fourteen, all adoption shall be sanctioned by a judicial authority.
2. That confidential official inquiries shall be made from time to time, as to the child’s progress and happiness in the adopted home.
3. That the child shall take the adopter’s name, and shall have, as far as is possible, the position of a natural child.
This Report was presented in June, 1921. Yet nothing has been done. And what I wish to emphasize with all the power that I have, is the crime of this delay and the urgent need there is for immediate legislation. Children are waiting to be adopted; childless people are waiting to adopt. Surely it ought not to be difficult to frame a simple law that would safeguard the interests of both.
There is little wonder that hitherto adoption has not been popular in this country. One strong reason that has prevented the far-sighted from attempting it is that in England there is no legal method by which adoption can be carried out. And because of this there is, as I have said, too much danger connected with it, as well as not enough certainty of its continuance. For the law grants the foster-parent no recognised control over the child.
There is the ever present fear, increasing as the years pass and the child grows up, lest the natural parent shall come one day and claim the right to take the child away—an injustice specially likely to happen as the child becomes older and is able to earn money.
Then there is, on the other side, the possibility (often realised) of the adoption being a commercial transaction between the parent (most frequently an unmarried mother) and a foster-parent, by which the latter receives a sum of money and takes over an unwanted child, who most frequently dies. It is horrible to contemplate.
But indeed, always, there is the dangerous position of the adopted child, who has no settled position, no legal claim on the foster-parents, who may adopt a child in the most solemn manner and keep it all through the attractive years of childhood, then, when the less attractive years of adolescence begin, or when any change in circumstances makes the adopted child no longer wanted, they can calmly withdraw their protection and turn the child out of their home. Again, I say, it is horrible to contemplate. The destiny of the adopted child is controlled throughout the unprotected years of childhood and of youth by the whim and caprice, both of the natural parent and the adopted-parent.
And do not comfort yourself by believing that these are merely imaginary troubles. They occur every day as every one knows who has any knowledge of the practice and results of child adoption in this country. I personally know of many cases of injustice that have brought disaster and unhappiness to the child. Let me tell you one. A boy was adopted by a man, unmarried, a minister of God, who was a social worker and greatly attached to children. But later in his life the man married. Under pressure from his mother, accounted as a religious and good woman, the adoption was cancelled, the boy, wanted no longer, was sent to a home for homeless children. No one troubled about him. Or take another case where an illegitimately born child—a baby girl, was abandoned and afterwards reclaimed three times during the first five years of her life! Each time the mother took her away from a happy home with foster-parents who loved and cared well for her. Then after a few months of neglect the mother again abandoned her. They had no legal remedy against the caprice of the mother.
These unguarded children belong to nobody. Here is an amazing gap in our law. It is worse than that—it is an amazing gap in our consciousness and sense of social responsibility. “Nobody’s children!” the phrase has a pitiable and stinging significance. Yet it is just this state of things we are countenancing with our lazy and callous indifference. There are tens of thousands of little ones for whom to-day it is bitter truth that they belong to no one. Orphaned, or unwanted by their natural-parents, many of them are being adopted in the worst and most casual manner—handed out “on probation” like a cat or a dog.
And if you doubt the truth of this statement, listen to the judgment of the Committee on Child Adoption as to the disgraceful carelessness with which adoption is being carried on in this country;
“We believe that the absence of proper control over the ‘adoption’ of children over seven years of age and under that age unless payment is made, results in an undesirable traffic in child life with which no one can interfere, unless proceedings are taken against the adopting parent for cruelty or neglect; children may be handed from one person to another, with or without payment, advertised for disposal, and even sent out of the country without any record being kept. Intermediaries may accept children for ‘adoption’ and dispose of them as and when they choose. Homes and institutions for the reception of the children exist which are not subject to any inspection.” (Paragraph 61, page 10 of the Report.)
The italics in this passage are mine; will you try to think what these conditions, which you are permitting, mean? Think of them with your hearts, not with your heads! And if you have a child of your own, passionately dear to your life, try to realise the abominable position—the cruelty that can hardly be escaped, as if it were your child, who was thus being handed callously from one person to another, without protection, without any form of legal guardianship.
We talk much of the nation’s care for children. Would it not then seem a necessary step to have some just provision of our law to protect the helpless unwanted child, who at present belongs to nobody? Humanity, and even good sense answers, “Yes.” The Common Law of England has hitherto always said most emphatically, “No.” Except for a reference to adoptions which has managed to slip into a marginal note of a Finance Act, there is no recognition of adoption in our laws.
The right thing to do is the simple thing. We have on the one hand, these homeless children, whose numbers have become much larger in these last years and with the change and slackening in responsible conduct, while on the other hand, we have, an increased number of women who are childless and will never be able to marry. The problem, at its simplest, is this: What can be done to bring together the childless woman with a mother’s nature and the motherless child?
I am not forgetting the Institutions that are already in existence. There are two agencies for arranging adoption, as well as other religious and social societies, and many homes, from which children can be adopted. These agencies are doing admirable work, but they cannot do a tenth part of what ought to be done. And the very worst cases, in which the child most urgently needs protection, often cannot be reached at all. This problem is too big to be muddled through privately. It is the concern of the whole nation.
The first necessary step is to legalise adoption. Until that is done, nothing can be done.
At present as I have told you, the position is one of very great danger. The law grants the foster-parents no recognised legal control over the child. The mother, or her relatives, unless obviously immoral and unfit persons, may at any time claim back the child.
Even in the most favourable circumstances there is danger, and a never-ending uncertainty that cuts at the very root of the adopted relationships. I repeat: neither the foster-parent or the child has any security. And at any time, and for any reason, the child may be taken from his home. Directly he (or she) grows up and is able to earn money, the needy relatives, with an eye on those small earnings or on the much larger sums squeezable from the foster-parents, may prove an ever-threatening nuisance. If the foster-parent acts boldly and resists such claim, the relative may apply for a writ of Habeas Corpus in the High Court, when (under the Custody of the Children’s Act, 1891) the case is decided at the discretion of the Court. As a rule, the interests of the child are considered, and, in this respect, matters have much improved of late years. But even if the decision is given in favour of the foster-parents so that the child remains in the home in which it has been reared and is loved, there is a period of ceaseless anxiety; and, that the decision will be favourable is certain only when the character of the claiming relative can be proved to be bad.
So curious is the law that it is safer to adopt the child of bad or doubtful parentage (where this can be proved) than the child of good and respectable people.
The other side of the position has also to be considered. As is evident, the foster-parents may be bad. This we have seen. And what I want to emphasise further is that here too the danger threatens the unprotected child. Just as the law gives no recognised protection to the good foster-parents, so it affords no protection to the child against a bad foster-parent.
All the time I am trying to drive into your consciousness the terrible position of the child that has no legal claims; no kind of safeguard. He (or, of course, she, and the girl babies are adopted much oftener than boys) may be adopted simply as playthings, or to satisfy deeply unconscious instincts of cruelty, or as an investment for the time when they can earn money. Also they can be cast off at the caprice of their adopters.
A further and permanent injustice, operative even under happy conditions and in a good home, arises from the fact that the adopted child is without rights of inheritance. If his foster parents, however rich, die intestate, he has no share in the family property. At any time in his life he may be left penniless and friendless, without recognition that he belongs to anyone.
Such uncertainty is awful. Try to realise the suffering which it must bring to the child, ever dogging his footsteps like a menacing shadow.
Our sluggard imaginations must surely be stirred now our attention has been directed to this gap in our law. I wish that my pen had greater power to bring home to everyone concerned—and everyone who cares or professes to care for the welfare of children is concerned—the iniquity of allowing the continuance of conditions that must bring nothing less than tragedy into the lives of these unfortunate and unprotected little ones.
This is almost the only country which does not recognise and legalise adoption: all that needs to be done is to bring our law up to the standard which prevails in other lands. We alone are neglectful. It is one of the many social matters concerning children on which Great Britain has seriously fallen behind the example of its own daughter States. The United States, Australia and New Zealand have all gone far ahead of the Mother Country in their legislation in regard to child adoption. All the forty-eight States of the Union have now Acts regulating adoption. But perhaps the Model Act is that of Western Australia, passed in 1891. It provides for the complete and careful guardianship of all adopted children. The Act has worked admirably, and with a very few alterations could be adopted to the needs of this country.
And it must not be thought that all this recognition and protection of adoption is a new thing, and, as such, possible to dismiss as unnecessary, belonging to an over-protective and grandmotherly system of law. Such a belief would be far from the truth. Students of history know how almost universal was the practice of adoption in older civilisations. Roman law recognised the custom and adoption was extremely common. I could give many other examples. Especially interesting is the custom in India, where among the Hindoos, when a child is adopted into a new family, it goes through the religious ceremonies belonging to death before quitting the home in which it was born, and afterwards goes through the religious ceremonies belonging to birth on reaching the new home. The old bond is completely severed and a new social, religious and legal bond created.
I would ask your attention to this wise provision made by one of the oldest civilisations, which often understood so much more practically and simply the needs of a social situation.
If the full necessary security is to be given to the practice of adoption there must clearly be a complete passing over of the duties and rights of the natural-parents to the adopting parents. Adoption ought to be undertaken only solemnly and with due understanding of all the difficulties, and the necessary precautions. The closest enquiries, in every case, need to be made as to the bona fide intentions and complete suitability of the adopting parents: guarantees must be given of their intentions and ability to bring up and care for the child. It would also be equally necessary, except in exceptional cases of proved cruelty and unfit parentage, to ascertain the reasons why the parents—or parent in the case of an illegitimately born child—desired to give up their rights of guardianship. But when once this has been done, and any order of adoption made, the parental relationship ought to be transferred completely from the natural to the adopting parents.
And in the interests of the child, I would have this transference carried out with the severest restrictions. I would not allow a parent, or parents, who once gave up the guardianship of the child any rights of visitation. Such visits, even under the happiest circumstances cause disturbance, remind the child unceasingly of its difficult position as an adopted child. They tend to create confusion, with feelings of dissatisfaction and jealousy; comparison between the old home and the new home; conflicts between the affection for the adopted-parents and the very possible drawing back of natural affection for the real parents.
All ways adoption must be difficult.
Science has shewn us how terribly the future of the child depends on its early relationships in the home; its relation to its mother, on whom it depends for the first childish satisfactions, its relations to its father, to its brothers and sisters. The adopted relationships can never be quite the same as the natural relationships. We now know how easily jealousy and unhappiness can arise in the heart of even the youngest child, and what havoc to the after life these feelings may bring. If we remember this, we shall realise better the disturbing emotions likely to be aroused when one parent is lost and replaced by another. That is why everything possible needs to be done to give to adopted parenthood the strongest stability. The adoption of a child ought never to be undertaken lightly. It is, perhaps, the most binding and the most solemn, and the most fatefully responsible of any human relationship.
A righteous law of adoption needs to guard the adopted child so that the voluntary relationship is as binding in every way and as permanent as the natural relationship. For this reason the adopted child should, in my opinion, have the same rights of inheritance as all other children. Nothing short of this can do justice to the adopted child.
We talk a great deal to-day about children and their rights, but very few of us realise at all practically and fully the change of attitude, in particular in connection with property and the rights of inheritances, that are likely to be necessary, if, in all circumstances, our theories are to be expressed in our daily conduct.
The whole question is complicated and very difficult, there is, indeed, no easy way out.
I was attending a conference to consider the best steps to be taken to aid mothers and to stop the sacrifice of the lives and health of little children. All kinds of suggestions were made. We talked much, we proposed and discussed, but none of us seemed able to agree what ought to be done.
Then a strong man, an observant lawyer, rose. He spoke with the biting American twang. His words were few: “Why don’t you pay poor mothers?”
The brilliant simplicity of this question stirred at once our powers of understanding.
It was Judge Neil who spoke. In brief phrases he told us what had been done in America. Mother’s pensions, which are in reality children’s pensions, have been established in most of the forty-eight States of the Union. They are granted until the children are fourteen, or, in the case of delicate children, until sixteen. State-appointed supervisors watch over the welfare of the children to ensure that the money given is well spent by the mother.
As Judge Neil placed the facts before us, this plan of paying mothers instead of forcing them to go out as workers, possibly at “sweated” wages, and then paying other people in an institution to do their work, seemed so simple that I was filled with wonder that we had not long ago thought of so easy and obvious a reform. It is strange that it is so often the most simple things that we never think of doing. I believe it is because we think of reforms intellectually; we are not human enough to feel.
Now, it is just Judge Neil’s humanity that set his feet upon the right way. Listen to the story of how first he came to think of mother’s pensions:—
In 1911, a poor widow, broken by the burden of supporting her family, was condemned to have all her five children taken from her.
“Better to shoot her than take away her children.” said Judge Neil. He then asked how much it would cost to maintain the children in a State institution.
“The country pays the institution 10 dollars a month for each child,” was the answer.
“Why not give the 10 dollars to the mother and let her keep her children?”
Such was Judge Neil’s humane and practical solution of the problem. Thus the scheme for pensioning mothers was born.
The responsibility of the State for children ill-cared-for is admitted in most countries. It is, therefore, a question of ways and means, not a question of high principle, how best to carry out this intention and prevent child poverty.
Surely grants to good mothers are better than grants to institutions. Even the best Poor Law schools must have the faults that are inherent in institutions.
I can hardly express too strongly my own want of faith in “expert child-trainers.” I have found always that they regard the child mainly, if not entirely, as something to be improved and instructed on a definite plan. The “expert” is never human, and a child has need of all the human treatment it can get.
Every child has absolute need of its mother. All experience shows us that the home, with its sympathetic relationships of mother and child, sisters and brothers, cannot be replaced. We must insist on reforms that will make home life possible.
The child has to accept the arrangements we make; that is why this question is of such immense importance. If the matter could be fixed by the will of the children I should have no fear. The child has not lost the true values of life.
There is another fact to consider—one that will appeal to ratepayers. Grants to mothers are cheaper than grants to institutions. In the United States the payment made to a mother works out at about one-third the cost of maintaining a child in an institution. So we can do the best thing for the child and its mother and at the same time save our pockets.
Much disturbing evidence on such a grave question as the bad behaviour and consequent punishment of boys and girls, in institutions, and in prisons, is made public, from time to time, to rouse the consciousness of all those who have concern for the welfare of the young. Sometimes the events recorded are of a more serious character. The attempted suicides and continued escapes of young prisoners certainly afford a rather tragic witness of some failure in our reformative efforts. Even under the Borstal system of prison life—a system that is primarily intended to be humane and educative, and not brutal and primitive, the results obtained are far from being satisfactory. We cannot feel that we are achieving anything like what ought to be done in the difficult, but necessary, duty of reclaiming these young lives that, for one cause or another, have fallen to disaster.
If we believe, as believe we must, that the old are responsible for the young—that the one generation must stand as guardian to the next—this problem of delinquency is one that we may not thrust aside. It is bigger than its immediate application in connection with reclaiming the individual boy or the individual girl: it touches the very deepest of our duties—our duty to the future. It is for us to ask many questions of ourselves, and of all those who are in any way connected with the young; questions to which it is not easy always to find satisfactory answers.
It is obvious that something is wrong.
I do not wish to harrow you with painful statistics, or by reminding you of unfortunate incidents in connection with young prisoners that you ought not to have forgotten. You would not have forgotten if you had cared as you ought to care.
I do not deny that “much is being done; that conditions are better far than they were in the past.” But this does not cover our failures or lessen our responsibilities. I plead for greater attention to, and more understanding of, the delinquent child. It is not, and never can be, a question that can be fixed or finally decided: the child is an individual; and, in each case, the problem of dealing with him must be a separate problem. This is certain—only by understanding the child who fails, his own difficulties and his own failure—can we advance. By this way only can we give aid to these young offenders, who, with a burden of ancient instincts and uncontrolled impulses, come into a world filled with undesirable examples, where they have to face manifold temptations.
Let us try, then, to consider the delinquent boy and girl, bearing these truths in our thoughts. And first we must acknowledge the complexity and terrible difficulty of the problem. Delinquency in the young cannot be explained by obvious superficial causes. The motivating impulse to naughtiness and bad conduct always lies outside of consciousness. I mean that the boy or girl who continuously does wrong, fails altogether in good conduct, whether in a reformatory, in a prison, or a Borstal institution is acting in this way from a reason which is deeply hidden, and which they do not themselves understand; while further, the present misbehaviour is connected with some experience of the past that now they have forgotten. They are driven by this inward urge into rebellion and insubordinate conduct. And the help they ought to have is one of re-education, by clearing up what was wrong in the past, and this help must be given to them by those who are specially trained to understand.
They cannot, unaided, help themselves. The things they do wrong—the breaking of rules, the failures in work, the violent conduct, the attempted escapes—in the vast majority of cases, are a defence against unhappiness that stalks as a deadly shadow, following their young lives.
Their treatment is a medical as well as a social and ethical problem. The young do wrong because their souls are sick. Such a statement is not fantastic, it is seriously true. To understand the meaning of the present bad conduct of anyone, but especially of the delinquent boy or girl, it is absolutely necessary to find out the motive which makes them want to behave badly. Always we have to search to find “a reason why.” To discover, as far as we are able, what it is causing the rebellion or the bad conduct, we must have wisdom to give up the old ignorant ideas as to its being possible to cure bad conduct, in any way that matters, by scoldings, by punishments or, indeed, any kind of direct attack.
The fault that distresses those in authority in the present must be regarded as the sign of a hidden conflict that has distressed the child in the past. It is this conflict, then, that must be discovered and dealt with. Never in any case can the lazy adult view be accepted that the delinquent child does wrong because of original sin.
The young do wrong when they suffer, usually through the blunders of those who are supposed to train them; their faults in behaviour are a relief for pain they find too intolerable to bear. If the boy or girl is happy in harmony with his or her world, then that boy or girl is good.
To find the real cure for this unhappiness of soul is, of course, a most difficult task. It can be accomplished completely only by those specially trained in understanding and analysing the child mind. But much good, and a return to healthy happiness can often be gained, by a little helpful understanding of the special problems of the individual boy or girl. It is the educator’s duty to try to pour daylight on the hidden plague spots of the soul.
This can never be done by cruelty or any form of coercive treatment which arouses fear—the most deadly enemy to right conduct. The way to educate the abnormal, the difficult boy or girl, is not to be shocked or to punish them, but to show them sympathy, directed by knowledge.
Teach these girls and boys that they have failed in good conduct, not because they are bad or different really from other more fortunate young people, but because they have been unhappy—ill with feelings of insecurity, of deficiency, of loneliness, of failure; help them to understand the causes that have brought about this condition, why they have felt inferior, been unhappy; and then build up their characters by giving them new opportunities of finding happiness in their work and in their play, providing new interests and creating opportunities for new responsibilities. These young people want kindness and to be taught to be sociable. Moral conduct is never easy. We all want what we do want. We surrender our wishes only because we find we satisfy other desires by so doing. We are praised and rewarded for good conduct and for preferring to give up to others what we want to do ourselves. And a very practical lesson in our training of delinquents depends upon this. The educators must take the greatest possible care that bad conduct does not give greater pleasure than good conduct. Doing wrong so often opens for the young the widest and easiest door to gain excitement. If boys and girls in Borstal institutions and in reformatories are left unnoticed and never praised when good they quickly feel neglected. And though they do not recognise these disappointed feelings they act very strongly in setting them to seek for some kind of relief. And if allowed to enjoy power when they become rebellious, through the notice that is bestowed upon them and the upsetting of the usual regime of the school or the prison workshop, they will continue to indulge in bad conduct whenever they are bored or, for any reason, crave some form of emotional relief.
Bad conduct is primitive, infantile conduct, and one of its strongest characteristics is the tendency to proceed more directly, more unthinkingly, and more selfishly to the goal of the wishes than is usually done by the reasonable adult.
The little child wants something, grabs at it, and when it does not at once get it, screams and breaks into a passion.
Now this is just what is done by the delinquent boy or girl, whose conduct must be regarded as infantile, frankly selfish, and regulated only by doing what one wants and getting what one wants. Such conduct points to a condition of retarded growth; and usually can be traced back to some mistake in the early training, which has prevented an adaptation of the character to grown-up conditions, so that the boy or girl of seventeen or eighteen acts still like the young child of four or five years of age.
Every child, who is to grow into a successful and happy adult, has to grow out of this primitive behaviour and to learn social standards of conduct—to think what other people want and to measure their own conduct in its relation to others.
Thus the real problem of the education of the delinquent boy or girl is to help them to grow up. And the very first step is to teach them to stop thinking about themselves. They have to learn to turn outwards towards others and away from their own wishes and hidden desires, that are the real cause of their unhappiness and bad conduct.
And for this reason, even if for no other, there could be no possible form of treatment as harmful, and also I may add so silly, as that adopted (as still so often it is) in reformatory institutions of placing insubordinate prisoners in solitary confinement, even sometimes with the use of irons. No other form of punishment could be more disastrous to a boy or girl. To permit this cruelty is assuredly to increase the faults of character that are the cause of the bad conduct. By such insane punishment the young offenders are separated from their companions, perhaps bound, and left without occupation to sit alone, brooding over their unhappiness; their thoughts necessarily fixed upon themselves. They cannot fail by means of this unhealthy process to be sent more backwards into childish and bad behaviour—driven further away from adult and social conduct.
Few of us, I think, understand sufficiently how continuous and almost unspeakably hard, are the efforts that the delinquent has to make in order to achieve re-education. He is overwhelmingly conscious (however much he may seem to be indifferent) of his own inferiority. All such boys or girls, who frequently become aggressive and insubordinate, need to be treated in such a way as will increase their confidence in themselves. This may seem contradictory, but it is true. If the young offenders are punished and discouraged the trouble from which they suffer is sure to increase by making stronger the sense of self-depreciation. Too often the devastating feelings are driven back into the obscure places of the mind—the unseen office of the directing forces that in secret issue the supreme commands that control conduct. It is in order the better to overcome the truths that would stab him about himself if he recognised them, that such a wrong-doer becomes aggressively self-assertive, indulges in foolish acts and marked insubordination. Such boys and girls are without courage, and all their pride boils up behind a maimed and timid character.
The important thing to remember is that, though bad conduct comes from what seems insubordination, “the characteristics of bad conduct” arise from the state of the boy’s or girl’s mind, and that state depends very much on the treatment he (or she) receives.
If you cure the particular fault for which the punishment was inflicted, and the boy or girl loses his (or her) soul, you have done more harm than good. But the real position is worse than that, for if you hurt the young soul, you give up for ever the opportunity of re-educating the boy or girl for good conduct.
I remember once seeing in “Punch” a picture that has always retained in my memory the vividness of the first impression. It is a long time ago, yet I can see it now exactly as I saw it then. A father, at a children’s Christmas party, was personating a bear. Filled with the adult’s joy of being allowed to be a child, he was roaring loudly, as he crawled upon the floor covered with a woolly hearth-rug. So much for the father. Certainly he was enjoying it. But what about the children. What was their view of this performance?
They were all looking bored. Even the tiny ones shewed no enthusiasm. In the corner of the room as far withdraw as space permitted was a group of young school boys, very stiffly correct in Etons and immense white collars. They were disgusted. One, who had ostentatiously turned his back on the performing father, was plainly angry. Even his back was eloquent of disapproval and gloom surrounded him. His companion, standing next to him, attempted to cheer him in this way: “Never mind, Brown major, you know its not your fault if your pater is a blooming fool!”
It is, indeed, a different aspect of the situation. The son ashamed of the father! The young generation condemning the old! It is fitting that we should take notice and remember the lesson that is taught.
For this picture of appraising youth carries a very real moral that should be considered by those modern educational enthusiasts, who are always talking about amusing the child—as if that were the one thing which mattered. There is no subject, I believe, on which greater nonsense is talked than on this one of interesting children. Personally I am sceptical whether children are ever greatly interested in the entertainments that the adult provides for their amusement. What they find interesting are the things they provide for themselves. That is one reason why there must be so great an element of falsity in modern educational theories, which aim at making lessons so interesting that they become like play.
It cannot be done.
Much of this kind of talk sounds admirable from the point of view of the adult, but what I always want to know is the view taken by the child—by the boy or the girl. I do not think they are quite so fond of being amused as we are apt to believe. Nor do I think they can be, or indeed, ought to be, interested (which is the same really as being amused) to adult orders. I mean that to be truly effective and liberating to the child, this interest must be dependent on what he has to do for himself. The work cannot be done for him. That is why I am afraid of the incursion into the schoolroom of the too anxious and amusement-providing spirit of the home. It causes too much indirect interference. It supplies too many appliances. It is over-occupied with arrangements and the smoothing away of difficulties. In a word it does not leave the child sufficiently to himself to learn his own lessons, to satisfy his own needs in his own way.
It proposes, of course, to do this, but it is just here that enormous mistakes occur.
I can fancy a group of boys and girls who, if they said what they really felt about their own education and our ceaseless experiments and efforts to make their lessons interesting and more acceptable to them, would pity us as fools.
The point of view of the child (also of the boy and the girl, but especially, I think, of the boy) is always so utterly different from the point of view of the adult. You see they are judging the situation personally, while we are judging it vicariously and ethically.
The ever-pressing idea of the educationalist to-day is to give the child freedom. But what is freedom? That is a question to which we have not yet found an answer. Do we consider sufficiently, if what means freedom to us, really gives freedom to the young? And a second question—Are we not, perhaps, in our nervous over-anxiety, imposing upon them something they do not want?
There is a great deal said about self-development and the necessity of the teacher respecting the child’s individuality. We are continually hearing of interesting experiments made in free schools and are told of children who, even when quite young, if left to choose their own tasks, will be so interested in writing, in reading, and also in arithmetic, that they will not want to give up their work even when school-hours are over!
Still I am unconvinced. I would rather have the boy or the girl waiting in eagerness for the bell to ring to free them from the school.
We are apt to over-estimate our grown-up power. We do this because we like to do it. It flatters adult egotism. We find a delicious sense of power in realising ourselves in so many new ways as potters to mould the clay of the child’s mind. I often feel that we worry about this question of education much more to please ourselves than to help the young.
But this continuous occupation with the child is bad for the child, however gratifying it is to ourselves. By the provision of too many appliances and “helps to learn,” and by continual experiments that are too often changed, we tend to check creative originality, and thereby we destroy the interest we are labouring to stimulate. It is better for the child if we are less occupied with his needs. If we do not provide him with interests he will find them for himself. In this case they will mean more to him—do more for him. I dislike exceedingly all contrivances that make things easy. I believe the child dislikes them too. That is one reason why he tires so soon of all the appliances you provide. They do not stimulate interest and effort, except quite temporarily, indeed, they destroy both.
This applies to children’s play quite as much as to their schoolwork. Most children to-day are given too many and too elaborate toys. Perhaps nothing is more mentally destructive. The child will invent his own amusements. He wants to fight giant lamp-posts and to go to sea in an inverted table. To fasten his imagination to your adult suggestions is to destroy his vigour.
Know then this truth. You can teach the child lessons and you can discipline him by your grown up authority, but you cannot by your ready-made devices successfully interest him or give him freedom. That he must find for himself. He cannot develop fully and be reliant, unless by himself, and very often against your will, he travels on his own road.
There is the very greatest delusion about this idea of freedom in the school room. And it is open to question whether the children in the free school, left mainly to choose their own tasks and take their own time in performing them, are really freer, in any true sense, than the disciplined and directed children in the master-ruled schools who have, in my experience, much better opportunities in the out-of-school hours of developing personality. The discipline of the school does help them by giving them more rest. I think they are less influenced by their teacher. For always there is, and must be, whatever the educational plan and however free from apparent compulsions, behind the pupil the will of the teacher indirectly, if not directly, guiding. And I am not sure if this indirect coercion of suggestion is not worse, from the point of view of the child, than the old-fashioned methods of direct command. I will even go further and state my belief that its claims are heavier, and bind the boy or girl more permanently in the prison of obedience.
For one thing, such indirect coercion does close for the pupils the splendid liberating door of being rebellious.
I can still remember the excitement and real health-giving joy I obtained when, as a child, I once out-witted my instructor and escaped from my lessons, which I heartily detested, to go to a fair we had all been forbidden to visit. There was a glorious fat woman, and a man who swallowed swords! Wonderful! And there was a delicious sweet in a long roll of twisted pink and white, with inside a picture of Roger, the Claimant. It was the time of the Tichbourne trial. If you could find one tiny piece of the sweet without the picture, a whole immense bar, much bigger than those which were ordinarily sold, was to be forfeited and given to you free! Think of it! The possibility! The excitement! Every penny I had was spent—and it was worth it! Yes, a thousand times worth it! Of course, what I did brought punishment. For I had to confess my misdeeds. Those sweets made me very sick. What did that matter? I did gain the joy and liberty I was seeking. This was one of the really educating experiences of my childhood.
Seriously, I am deeply afraid that to-day in our very eagerness to help children, we may often be acting in an exactly opposite direction as a hinderance to their self-development, and future happiness. I believe we are trying to achieve something that is impossible.
One thing I am certain we ought to accept. It is the inescapable barrier between the generations—between the parents and the children, the teachers and the pupils. The young ought to be separated from the old. I think this biological fact is forgotten by many advocates of freedom and new ideals in education.
I believe also that the young want—and by “want” I mean both desire and need—the direction of the old. They want the authority that marks the division between the two generations, for this opens up opportunities to rebel. Instinctively they know they can find more liberty under authority, than when left with the pressing burden, often too heavy for their young inexperience, of deciding at school, as well as at home, almost everything for themselves.
Nor do I very much believe in the over-worrying conscientiousness of the modern teachers. Again I must insist upon this. The increasing pre-occupation with the child; the constant trying of different educational experiments, is almost certain to exercise an adverse influence. There may be a tyranny of solicitude and kindness that is harder to bear than scoldings and punishments. To me there is something mournful in this chorus of uncertainty, in which it is not difficult to detect the poverty of our faith. It tells a tale of infirmity both of life and purpose. So small a thing staggers us. We are without confidence in ourselves or in life. Why is this?
Do we, I often ask myself, know at all, what the child wants to find the freedom that gives liberty to the young soul—the only freedom that matters? How can we give the gifts of life unless we have ourselves firmer confidence? If anything can destroy the soul of a child, it is want of security. Our irresolution is our great danger. That is why so often our efforts are barren. It is a sign of a nervous disorder of the soul. We seek to gain from outside things what we should find within ourselves. And the child must suffer. For the child is so helplessly dependent, so inarticulate, so unable to express his own feelings and deeper needs.
There is still the most amazing blindness in regard to the effect of adult conduct on the child. I know of one small boy who was taught in a free school, where the idea of authority was held in abhorrence. Yet this boy of eight was found one night sobbing bitterly. His mother questioned him. It appeared he had been idle at school, rude, and generally naughty. He had not been scolded, and, of course, not punished. He had been reasoned with and told the foolishness of behaving in this way. Apparently all ought to have been well. Yet it was just in this reasonable gentleness of his headmaster that his trouble rested. He knew he had been naughty. He wanted the punishment that would have wiped out his own consciousness of wrong doing. He sobbed out his complaint to his mother, “if only he (his teacher) had punished me or been cross and nasty I could have forgotten. It would have been all over. But now I keep on thinking about it, and I feel all twisted up inside.”
Now this young boy understood his own needs much better than did his master, who was making the very common mistake of judging the child by himself. The needs of the child are entirely different from the needs of the adult. The child wants security, he wants firmness, he desires authority, he even wants punishment.
Let me tell you another story to help to bring home these forgotten truths. This time it was a little girl of the tender age of six years, who had done wrong, was rude and very unkind to her governess. The occasion was a birthday party. Over-excitement was the outside cause of her bad behaviour. No one minded the rude remarks except the child herself. We all, including the insulted governess, understood the reason. Our mistake was, we understood too well, or rather, we judged from the outside and from our grown-up point of view, forgetting that it was not that of the child. We all tried to comfort the little one’s distress, assuring her we understood and knew she did not mean what she had said. In vain. The child would not be comforted. I can never forget the fatalism of her remark, “It does not matter that Miss —— and all of you forgive me, what matters is that I did it.”
Again it was the child, not we—the grown-ups, who understood the situation as it really was. And what I want to impress upon you, is the suffering unwittingly imposed on both these children. If they had been punished they would not have felt this paralysing sense of wrong doing—a suffering of the soul, fitting perhaps for the adult, but not for the child. With punishment or even with scolding, the penalty would have been paid, and the relief would have been gained of self-forgiveness—a relief so much more necessary to happiness than the forgiveness of others.
Of course, it may be argued that morally such self-accusation which does follow from this method of adult forgiveness, with its sentimental treatment of wrong doing, is good for children. I do not think so. Certainly it makes them suffer—suffer intolerably and to an extent that few adults are sufficiently discerning to realise. But the burden placed on the untried, unhardened and sensitive child-soul is, I am certain, too heavy for them to bear safely at this stage of their psychic growth. Punishment would, in almost all cases, be far easier and more acceptable. It would also be far healthier. There is always the gravest danger in placing the immature child in any position that forces an emotional response in advance of the stage of development which has been reached. We have to see these problems as the child feels them, not as we think about them with our grown-up experience and adult deadness.