‘In the Best Interests of the Child’: Chapter 1. The Problems and Our Questions

Parents raise their children as a labour of love and not as a professional assignment. Unlike child-development experts and other professionals concerned with child care, parents are not specialists. Their responsibility is the whole child—his every need at all times. They, as James and Joyce Robertson describe,

accept his love, tolerate his demands and failings, share his pain and pleasure—and get satisfaction from doing so. They may be sorely tried at times, but more than anyone else they are able to tolerate his growing pains. The child knows he is special to them, whether he is pleasing or not, well or ill, succeeding or failing. He unhesitatingly turns to them with his pleasures and miseries, confident that they will be there. He knows they are likely to see his point of view and give him the benefit of doubt before voicing critical comment. They become the brick wall he can safely kick against. Impatient or angry though they may sometimes be, he recognizes that these are often signs of their concern for him. His feelings about himself reflect his parents’ feeling about him. The child whose parents value him values himself. Parents usually carry these strong feelings throughout their lives—the love, the anxiety for their children's welfare and happiness.1