Freud_Burlingham_1943_War_and_Children_k_text

April—July 1942CONFLICTING ATTITUDESOur attempts to start "artificial families" inour nursery, i.e.to assign three or four childrenonly to one young worker as their special"mother" interested some of our readers andled to further discussion of the subject. Thisagain was a welcome opportunity to reviewonce more our observations about the attitudeof the real mother towards the child which isseparated from her and the reactions of thechild to the expressed or unexpressed emotionsof the mother.In trying to trace the numerous failures ofthe billeting system to their sources, a greatdeal of attention has been paid to the attitudeof the foster mothers, and to the difficulties ofthe children which often seemed to make thetask of foster mothers an impossible one. Lesshas been said about the inner attitude of themothers themselves. But it remains a fact thatchildren are taken out of billets and nurseriesand brought back to danger areas even wherebillets and nurseries are satisfactory and whenthe children themselves are perfectly easy tohandle. They are taken home in a great numberof cases because the mother cannot copewith the conflict within her own feelings.162Her