Beyond Mothers and Children: Finding the Family in Pediatric Psychology

Abstract

a new invention, and few families owned one. Children were to be reared in a two-parent family consisting of one set of biological parents and their children. Adoptions were generally kept secret. Unwed motherhood, homosexuality, and alcoholism were shameful topics discussed only behind closed doors. There was no sex education in schools. Divorce was taboo, and most people had never heard of marijuana. Racial segregation was legal and interracial marriage was illegal. If a woman with children worked outside the home, she was pitied because her husband was not a good provider. Women with serious careers did not marry. In pediatrics, antibiotics were newly available and IM penicillin was cheerfully administered to children for all sorts of infections without any knowledge of the potential for sensitivities or the development of resistant bacterial strains. There was no 911 emergency response system, no organ transplantation, no dialysis, no treatment for cancer. Humans were thought to have 48 chromosomes, and DNA had not yet been discovered. The concept of child abuse did not exist, but doubt was beginning to be cast on the syndrome of spontaneous subdural hematoma, which had been described in the literature (Caffey, 1946). Children with physical and mental disabilities were routinely excluded from school. If their disabilities were severe, they were institutionalized— permanently. Iron deficiency anemia and polio were among the top pediatric problems. (There was no iron-fortified infant formula and no polio vaccine.) Infectious diseases accounted for the majority Journal of Pediatric Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 3, 2000, pp. 161–169