The Committee realizes that drinking and gambling to excess may well be symptomatic[5] of the type of home where there is child neglect. There is no need to stress the obvious. But the matter does not rest there. Much danger is inherent in the view that no social occasion is complete without liquor. It has come to the notice of the Committee that many parents are conniving at the practice of having liquor at adolescent parties. Such parents are being unfair to young people, and the Committee considers that if right-thinking parents took a firm stand in this matter a sound lead would be given to the community as a whole.
X. The Home Environment
(1) Feelings of Insecurity: The Unloved Child
A harmonious emotional development during childhood is one of the most important factors influencing human behaviour. Any child who feels unloved, unwanted, or jealous of the care and attention given to other members of the household suffers from a feeling of insecurity. This feeling of insecurity renders the child more susceptible to influences leading to delinquency.
The mother's attitude to the child is of prime importance. There is a psychological link between mother and child from the very moment of birth—a link that can be substantially strengthened by breast feeding as far as it is practicable. The attitude of the mother to the child, even before birth, may well have a marked effect upon the child's sense of security. If pregnancy was not welcomed by the mother, her child may come into the world under a distinct handicap, that of being an unwanted child. Subsequent adjustment may not be as satisfactory as she imagines it to be.
There is often, however, a vast difference between the parents' love of a child and the child's subsequent idea of being loved. The love that every child needs is affection combined with wisdom—a wisdom that will show itself in a watchful concern for the child's well-being throughout childhood to late adolescence. It can be summed up as the kind of love found in a warm family life where all the members—father, mother, and children—are in a proper relationship the one to the other. This relationship is mere difficult to obtain where the child was unwanted or where one parent becomes unwilling to share with the child the love which he or she formerly alone received from the other parent.
A child living in an abnormal family environment, whether that abnormality arises from the birth of the child or the maladjusted personality of a parent, is the type of child which may later seek compensation in irregular sexual behaviour. But the child who, during its early years, lives in an environment where it feels secure, loved, and accepted is not likely to become a deviant.
Evidence has been presented to the Committee of many cases of delinquency which may fairly be traced to one of the following causes:
(a) Emotional Disturbances that have arisen out of a divorce, separation, or remarriage. An emotional upset may arise from a home that is broken by a divorce or separation or, equally important, from a home in which tension follows discord between the parents.