| Abstract: | Throughout the industrialized world the birth rate has fallen to barely replacement level. Economic pressure is the main brake. Family income is reduced when the mother leaves work to bear and rear children just when family expenditure is increased; the major item of expenditure is the need for extra space. Consequences for children will include the financial and economic burdens of sustaining an increasingly elderly society. But loneliness is the greatest burden that the child must bear as the result of being an only child, or only 1 of 2. Moreover, social mobility has broken the extended family. The child therefore faces over-intense relationships with his parents, which can actually cripple development. Worse, the child may have only 1 parent with whom to relate because divorce rates are rocketing. Every year divorce cases leave a million American children in single parent families; 1 in 3 children born in the 1970s will have this experience. More widespread is the loss of the full time mother because she works and probably expects to work. She may see the child as an encumbrance. The television set has become the surrogate parent. Fathers are unable to sustain the emotional demands because they face their greatest career anxieties during the child-rearing years. The psychological effect is uncharted, but many children of today may be suffering the trauma of rejection. |
