POOR PARENTHOOD CAUSES DELINQUENCY Though the 1945 figures are not yet available, du divorces in Michigan as compared to 41,678 marriage of divorce to marriage in Michigan has increased 21 In 1945, there were 17,988 divorce cases filed in to 20,969 marriages. Probably there are more childre per year than there are marriages This is an Indi of parenthood. Delinquency

The delinquent's home

The delinquent's home is training and parental care. are divorced, or ill, or disin mostly and runs the streets fre

He is seldom at home, except when he sleeps late in the morning. His parents ang at him, but offer no companionship, confidence, or close supervision. They distrust him, and often he has reason for the same feeling toward them. He does not even intend to mind the irritating, dictatorial, or pleading parental entreaties nor do the parents expect his obedience. Parent-child affection is often maudlin on the part of the parent, and merely a protection contact for the child.

There are a few delinquents coming from good homes, as the result of ignorance in child care or training, or a psychiatric problem.

Shunned by society

The delinquent is the nice-appearing, unfortunate child whom society shuns. The neglect or inadequacies of his parents cause his ostracization from good society. We tell our children not to play with him or her. We fail to make him feel comfortable and wanted in our homes, churches, schools, and communities. The child feels his increasing isolation from nondelinquents and reacts in his loneliness and unhappiness with ever-increasing delinquency.

We do little or nothing to prevent his delinquency at its inception and give no help to his inadequate parents until the damage is done.

Naturally he grows up to fill our jails, prisons, and mental hospitals.

Then

we support him at public expense the rest of his life. His children are the next crop of delinquents.

Need for training parents

Society suffers from parental degeneracy. It is estimated that $5,000,000 is expended annually in Michigan for the care of delinquent and neglected children. There are an estimated 15,000 delinquent children wards of the various juvenile courts of the State; and there are an estimated 163,000 children in the State of Michigan who are under the supervision of the courts of chancery because their parents are divorced.

There are thousands of children in boarding homes in the care of private agencies. Many people are expecting to dump their children on public and private agencies. Delinquency is in the ascension. Shall we meekly shoulder

the ever-increasing responsibility, or shall we roll up our sleeves and actually prevent delinquency at its source-poor parenthood?

Schools best equipped

How may we obtain better parenthood? I believe the schools are most able to train better parents for the future. It is my conviction that we must enlarge and improve and public- and parochial-school education so that they may prepare and train the most underprivileged child for better parenthood; that the schools must assume a full-day program for child training of predelinquent children, including medical and dental care, social and cultural training, and philosophical education; and that special classes in training for parenthood should be afforded every child.

Good parenthood includes many features and demands the exercise of many functions. Let us summarily examine the practical side of good parenthood. Briefly, good parenthood demands deep understanding and affection, exemplary conduct, personal care, knowledge and intelligence, guidance but not rigid control, inculcating of fundamental virtues of character and habit, and the life philosophy of the Golden Rule.

Synthetic parenthood

Today there are many young parents who fill their lives with personal pleasure to the exclusion of unselfish services; who don't go to church or serve their community, or care about good government; and who expect the hired girl or grandmother to do all the actual living with and for their children. It is quite natural that their children become delinquents.

We cannot expect poor parents of this generation to train their children to become good parents of the next generation. Even the children of good parents are taught very little about parenthood. Therefore, we must start with the future parents, our school children, and teach them in the schools how they may become good parents when they grow up and marry.

The sixth to the twelfth grades in every public school should include as part of their required curriculum a continuing course in parenthood. What better education may our children obtain from the schools? What is more necessary for future-life happiness?

WHY WE SHOULD EDUCATE OUR CHILDREN AS FUTURE PARENTS

We are currently working to reform and reeducate the poor parents of the present generation. But it is a difficult, almost hopeless job. You see, we are starting too late in life. Their bad habits are formed; little can be done to change adults.

A well-intending mother said to me, "I wish there were a school for parents. I'd go." But in the same breath she said that her 13-year-old daughter was only doing "the same as other kids" in staying out all night. Poor mother. How little she understands of parenthood.

So let us concentrate on the problem of training our future generation of parents. Let us improve our school facilities and train our future parents. Let me illustrate the problem. Sit with me vicariously in the juvenile court and see for yourself.

Examples from courtroom

Here are parents pleading for their 14-year-old child who has stolen an automobile. This lad is bright, good-looking, and appealing. His intelligence quotient is 110-above normal. Why does he steal? Because he enjoys it. It is his fun. He was never taught the fun of competitive games or the need of playing the games by the rules. He thinks in terms of the “caught” and the “uncaught,” not in terms of fairness to others.

He has never heard of the Golden Rule and hasn't the slightest notion as to why we have laws or social rules. He has rarely experienced discipline or selfdenial. His natural affection for his parents is purely emotional and void of understanding.

He has always had food, clothing, and shelter from home but right there his parents quit their job. They gave him nothing else. He can't remember ever having been inside a church. The only good factor about this boy are those engrafted by the public school.

Lessons in dishonesty

Here are the parents of a 13-year-old girl. They tell me they have been good parents. Yet the child is such a confirmed liar that she can tell a falsehood easier than the truth. Her mother is really shocked to learn of the child's sex delinquency; yet this mother has entirely failed to give the child the most rudimentary sex education. She says she counseled the girl against dishonesty; but after the girl stole clothing from a store, the mother knowingly used some of the stolen goods.

These are just examples. All cases are similar in principle. I have never seen a delinquent who was not the product of poor parental care and training. So it is a vicious circle. Poor parent rears poor child. It will remain our major problem until we tackle the source of our trouble-poor parenthood.

Let our schools teach our children how to bring up their own children as good future parents.

When the schools have accepted this responsibility, juvenile delinquency will rapidly diminish.

WHAT SHALL THE SCHOOLS TEACH OUR FUTURE PARENTS?

Parenthood must be taught in our schools.

The good prospective parent needs to know many scientific, medical, social, and philosophical facts about two things: Namely, the marriage relationship, and parenthood. One may know all of the essentials concerning good child care and yet be an utter failure in marriage. The best of child care may fail, or at least be tremendously handicapped, by unsuccessful marriage.

Children must understand that the boy-and-girl freedoms, flirtations, and the fluctuations of emotional objectivity must largely cease at the time marriage is entered into. Those who do not possess this viewpoint are not ready for marriage. The wise young people of today become engaged and test their feelings thoroughly before marriage. The present law requiring a 5-day waiting period before a marriage certificate may be issued should be extended to requiring at least a 6-month waiting or engagement period.

Let me illustrate. A young couple told me earnestly that they were intensely in love. The boy was a soldier about to return to camp. I ordered the 5-day waiting period to be waived and they were promptly married. Two days later, the girl was seen on a date with a sailor.

Thousands of young people have recently hurried into marriages. The haste of war, the uncertainty of the future, and the desire for the serviceman's allotment cause many of these young people to unpreparedly and without careful consideration hurry into disastrous marriages. There is a multitude of sad, yet concrete, illustrations of the point.

There are scientific matters concerning marriage which should be candidly exhibited to our children and fully understood by them.

The whole problem of sex is worthy of a separate course of instruction. Thorough knowledge and understanding permits it to become a reasonable part of normal life; abused, misunderstood, or subverted, it becomes life's greatest danger.

Health problems are often overlooked. Many marriages "go on the rocks" through lack of consideration and understanding in times of ill health. Illness causes irritability, nervousness, and tensions. Those suffering from chronic illness are usually hard to get along with, and often hard to understand. Seldom do we realize that the bad temper is really the result of physical or mental illness. This condition alone is the cause of many a divorce where previous educational understanding of the problem might have avoided most of the matrimonial trouble. I believe that the mental illness of many women of middle age is either caused or accentuated by lack of understanding of this problem. Adequate training in youth will help to avoid these tragedies.

Marriage should be taught in connection with parenthood. The latter should not be an unwanted byproduct, but should be anticipated as the greatest happiness evolving from the marriage relationship. In this connection, unnecessary fears or feelings of insecurity as to health, restriction of liberty, finances, and the assumption of parental obligations in general should be carefully studied and understood. Such education would teach young people as a practical matter that the pleasure of parenthood fully compensates for all of the attendant inconveniences.

These are but a few of the important educational matters which should be taught concerning marriage. If you were to live your life over again, would you not profit greatly by a better knowledge and understanding of these factors?

It is not necessary to recite here either the need for education for parenthood or the educational matters which should be taught. There are literally hundreds of textbooks and treatises available. The need is apparent everywhere. Every case of child neglect which I have ever heard in court illustrates one or more of the cited needs for education for marriage and education for child

care.

It is my recommendation that those who know and understand and deal with child care and training be brought together to formulate a plan for the prevention of juvenile delinquency, under the supervision of the schools of the State. I am sure that if the State superintendent of public instruction will take the initiative, the job can be done.

WHAT TREATMENT DO WE NOW GIVE TO OUR DELINQUENTS?

We have more crime schools than children's clinics; more children's jails than training centers. Every hardened criminal was once merely a predelinquent child.

We plan for incarceration, punishment, and some correction. We make no real effort at prevention.

This child who has been gradually becoming a delinquent since early childhood is suddenly afforded social education on a mandatory basis. Many a child is hustled off to a reformatory which is in reality a kids' jail. Others are placed on probation without even realizing what probation means and without any real supervision. Either of these courses merely acts as a possible temporary deterrent as he grows into an adult criminal.

The high percentage of recidivism shows us that the necessary changes in attitudes and actions of delinquents cannot be made merely through court appearances or perfunctory visits to probation officers. Reformation is a long, difficult process.

Facilities inadequate

Now the modern juvenile court is trying hard to train delinquents to become good citizens. But adequate facilities and personnel are the exception rather than the rule. Ideally, the juvenile court maintains an observation and study institution, where the child is placed and observed under an intensely busy day of normal routine of school, play, consultation, and general child training.

Psychometric tests are given to determine his mental ability. Occasionally psychiatric help is needed. Case workers, psychologists, teachers and supervisors then pool their information gained from observation of the child and determine what sort of child he is and what should be done to help him.

The home conditions are studied, and if the parents are susceptible of improvement, the child is soon returned to their custody under close court supervision, and under promise to carry out a healthy daily child education and care program.

Many facilities are becoming available for reform of delinquent children. Here and there institutions are being so humanized as to become fairly good substitutes for home care. This is only afforded, however, where the staff dealing with such children are intelligent, high type persons who love children greatly and have the ability to gain the child's affection.

Constant living with children is necessary in order to change deep-seated habits and to create moral insight and induce wholesome objectives. Thus, the institutional child's program must be busy from morning 'til night with the best possible training and education and fun, all continually within the sight and hearing of outstanding teachers or youth leaders.

Then, too, this program must usually continue for a long period of time often several years, sometimes throughout the balance of childhood, for it takes time to train children.

After the institution has served its purpose, if the child's own home is not suitable, he must be placed in a good foster home where he actually becomes an accepted member of the family. This again should often take years.

There is no such thing as a short period youth training program which will produce good citizens. The program must be designed for the full period of childhood except where social readjustment has obviously terminated the need. Unfortunately, there is hardly a public program of any type which completely affords this thorough service to children.

Institutions like the Boys' Vocational School at Lansing are obviously inefficient and in some respects are actually crime schools because they permit the delinquents to "stew in their own juice," so to speak, to brag to each other of their feats of criminality and encase themselves in hardness of character. The fault does not lie exclusively with the individuals operating these schools.

It is more justly attributable to the lack of understanding of underlying causes of delinquency and proper methods of treatment, coupled with entirely inadequate personnel and facilities. Children are often released merely to make room for others, and when it is known full well that they have made little or no progress toward improvement of habits or reformation of character.

Long way to go

Much progress has been made, but we have a long way to go and a great deal more money and intelligence and planning will have to be put into the program before we do a good job of retraining confirmed delinquents.

There are 8,476 persons in Michigan State prisons for adults. There are 15,000 delinquent children annually in the Michigan juvenile courts.

Would it not be wise to concentrate on preventing delinquency? Prevention is so much easier than cure!

WHAT ARE THE BASIC NEEDS OF OUR CHILDREN?

In the midst of plenty, many of our children are starving. They are in desperate want of social growth, medical and dental care, moral and spiritual training.

Social opportunity

Without realizing it, we are rearing some children with vastly superior social opportunities, and others in neglect. Many homes through neglect, ignorance, or lack of finances, afford no opportunity for social or cultural training.

However, most cities and villages of Michigan have remarkably fine characterbuilding facilities and social contacts available for children. For instance in the city of Pontiac, there are 8,780 children between the ages of 9 and 18, and over half of these children, namely, 4,987, belong to such organizations at the Boy Scouts, YMCA, Boys' club, etc.

Now, these organizations are not necessary in the life of every child, but nevertheless, the very children who need these facilities the most are usually without

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