THE CARE OF DEPENDENT CHILDREN

There are many clinical implications for the care of dependent children in the rapid social and family changes of today's society. These changes have affected theory and practice; they have colored the perception of human behavior and have determined many of the reactions to the presence of children. They are making some programs obsolete and are introducing a changing priority within others. The impact of much of this disruption appears to be related to the social process which locks the individual into a system and makes all programs as much a product of the needs of the system as of the individual. Attitudes toward children are established to a considerable degree by social and economic styles. For example, the organization of an agrarian society determines the existence of a child early in its life as one of the productive resources. The use of children for tilling the soil, caring for the flocks, and participating in household tasks established them as an integral part of the family while it provided strong ties among its members. This union strengthened the position of children within this society while giving them much of their identity. It produced the patterns of family and given names and the practice of leaving the children the property of family as tangible evidence of their agrarian heritage. Nearly all current legal and social practices reflect this heritage by the priority still given to the protection and transmission of property rights over all others.