The death of children following negligence: social aspects

Although the figure of unreported cases of neglected children is much higher than that of physical ill-treatment of children, neglect has rarely received attention, in most cases only when traces of physical ill-treatment were proven at the same time. Symptomatic are in the first place intense emaciation as well as dry puckered, scaly and extremely dirty skin, lack of subcutaneous fatty tissue and of Bichat's fat pad, matted hair, aged face, sunken eyes, and eczema from urine with ulcerations in the buttock and thigh regions. In addition one finds signs of localized hypothermia or rickets. My own observations cover 54 cases in which neglect and malnutrition have caused the death of the children involved. All the children had been living in extremely bad social conditions. The backgrounds of the children's mothers were also socially poor. Most of the mothers were too young to fulfill their duties. The fathers, where known, were alcoholics, unwilling to work and seldom cared for their family. They too were often too young to cope with their role as father. In this day and age, which has provided us with a much better understanding of the importance of the early development of the child for its later social attitude, mothers with all their problems and difficulties should not be left on their own. Motherlike behaviour is not necessarily programmed with the birth of a child. Mother duties must be learned as early as possible. This process should begin during pregnancy at the latest. A few proposals will be made.