With respect to the fate of children of young single mothers on welfare, legislators should consider the Hampstead Nurseries in London.

Between 1940 and 1945, 80 children between 10 days and 10 years old, made homeless by reasons of war, were placed in three residential nurseries supervised by the child psychologist Anna Freud and by my grandmother Dorothy Burlingham.

After 56 months of continuous observation, the first and foremost conclusion the women reached was that, for a child, the horror of war pales beside the horror of separation from mother. They discovered that the war itself was only "a precipitating and aggravating agent." From this perspective, enlightened day care would be preferable to orphanages

© 1994