MOTHER IS NOT A LUXURY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 725, 5 June 1953, Page 6

MOTHER IS NOT A LUXURY

ICK children are naturally upset when parting from their parents for a week and so, equally naturally, will be much less upset by waiting until to-morrow-a time-interval even toddlers can understand. Even if this were not true by the usual superficial criteria of obvious misery and misbehaviour, much less suffering, present and future, results when emotional distress is not’ allowed to accumulate without expression or relief. Is the docile, tearless child necessarily in a good mental state? You can’t go by outward appearances alone. You need an intimate knowledge of each sick child’s total personality before, during, and after hospitalisation before you can state what the effects have been. Very often, the docile, apparently apathetic or withdrawn child is the one who suffers most in the long run, and may be in an unhealthy mental state. Many follow-up studies of children discharged from hospital show that personality damage is greatest and most lasting the: younger the child, and the longer and more complete his separation from his family-especially his mother. Permanent and severe damage is by no means inevitable, but damage does occur in enough cases to show that the most rational and humane approach is the preventive ‘one. Daily visiting is the most important part of such a preventive approach. The continual presence of a mother is not a luxury but a necessity for happy development (of young children especially), and the nearer we can approach this in hospital the better. There may be some difficulties of administration and staffing, but many hospitals have already proved that these can be surmounted once a staff appreciates the resultant benefit to children. The greatest practical difficulty is ‘simply that, on the whole, medical and nursing training is such that dispropor-

tionate emphasis is placed upon the physiological and administrative aspects of hospital services to the comparative neglect of needs of patients as complete personalities. Once this basic principle is appreciated the relationship between hospital staffs, patients and_ their families will be improved by greater mutual respect and confidence, and such innovations as daily visiting of sick children will run smoothly and naturally. Fewer mothers, for instance, will appear "silly" to nurses if they feel they are welcomed in the ward as one of a team in which all the members are co-operating to the same end. It is all put very neatly by the World Health Organisation’s Report of the Expert Committee on Nursing (First Session, with Miss Lambie, of N.Z., as chairman): "The reorientation may also require a change from the idea that nurses do for people, to the idea that nurses do with people. . ."

Q. H.

Brew

Psychologist