Freud_Burlingham_1943_War_and_Children_k_text

certainly more than the average inexperiencedfoster mother can be expected to cope with.We certainly see no similar states of distressin children when we make the roundof London shelters and find them sleepingon the platforms next to their mothers. Ourown feelings revolt against the idea of infantsliving under the condition of air-raid dangerand underground sleeping. For the childrenthemselves, during the days or weeks of homesickness,this is the state of bliss to which theyall desire to return.There are so many obvious reasons whysmall children should not stay in London sheltersthat it is not easy to pay equal attentionto the emotional reaction of the individualchild against evacuation.A child who is removed from London to thecountry is certainly removed from a state ofgreater danger to a lesser one; it exchangesunhygienic conditions of life for more hygienicones.It avoids possibilities of infection whichmultiply where thousands of individuals aremassed together. If the child goes to a residentialnursery, it will be better fed than before;it will be given proper occupation and companionshipand will be spared the dreariness ofan existence where it was dragged to and frobetween home and shelter with long and emptyhours of queuing-up at a tube station.44