You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
[probably May 1950]
Sir,
The most important element in our country at any one moment is the ordinary home in which ordinary parents are doing an ordinary good job, starting off infants and children with that basis for mental health which enables them eventually to become part of the community. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with this, which is not only good but also a delicate matter and easily disturbed. It is indeed deplorable that there are homes in which children are neglected or cruelly treated, and organizations such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children which help such children need our support in their difficult task. If, however, by supplementation of those voluntary bodies by some Government department improved access to bad homes should involve the slightest degree of intrusion on the ordinary common good home, more harm than good will be done. Nothing could be more disastrous than the extension of interference by militant sentimentalists who will make parents afraid to be natural.
The danger is that workers with official backing will fear to enter into suspected homes because of the legal safeguards which protect the home from State interference, or else the legal safeguards themselves will have to be diminished and the privacy of the ordinary good home will be lost. Moreover, from the published accounts no one would be able to guess that there is a serious shortage of trained workers so that the implementation of the new Act which has resulted from the valuable Curtis Report cannot be effectual for many years. The cry about children badly treated in their own homes comes from very easily roused pity and not from any knowledge of the actual situation in respect of persons able to do this work well.
I am yours, etc.,
D. W. Winnicott.