.

THE CHILD: WELFARE OBJECTIVE AND SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT JAMES H. S.

BOSSARD The William Carter Foundation University of Pennsylvania

One of the striking differences between sociology and certain other of the life sciences
dealing with human relationships is to be found in the nature and degree of emphasis
placed upon the child and the processes of child development. Sociologists have shown
little inclination thus far to consider childhood as a separate area for scientific
exploration. It is interesting and albeit significant to note how few times the words child
and children appear in sociological texts, including those with chapters on the family
and on personality development. In psychology, by way of contrast, from the beginning
of its development on a scientific basis, the child was the main center of interest. It is
significant to note that the late G. Stanley Hall was both a pioneer in American
psychology and an outstand-ing specialist in child psychology. Moreover, the history of
the application of psychology to human problems has been largely that of its application to child problems, first to problems which were chiefly pedagogical in nature,
and then later to the problems of child behavior. Much the same can be said about the
evolution of psychiatry. Its initial emphases, once psychiatry left the mental hospital and
stepped into the arena of everyday life, have been largely upon the behavior processes
and problems of childhood and youth. In both of these sciences, the concentration upon
the child seemed inevitable as a matter of scientific sequence and pedagogically sound
as an application of the project method. In addition to the example of these closely
related sciences, other factors combine to throw the sociological detour around the child
into even bolder relief. One of these has been the sociologist's emphasis upon the family
as a social institution. Courses dealing with the family are offered by virtually all
sociology departments in American colleges and universities. The Kennedys have
shown' recently that such a course is one of the three or four standard courses in
American sociology. Although the child obviously is an integral part of the family, the
emphasis given to the child in sociological textbooks on the family tends to be
somewhat meager and incidental. Two notable exceptions to this are Professor Groves'
book on The Family and Its Social Functions, published in 1940, and Professor
Folsom's recent (1943) book on The Family and Democratic Society. Another related
fact in the development of American sociology has been the recognition of specific
population elements as proper areas for scientific treatment, and the emergence of
standardized courses dealing with such elements. For example, among the earliest
specialized courses given in American departments of sociology were those dealing
with the Negro, the immigrant, the criminal, the socially subnormal, and the like. More
recently, the terminology employed in some of these course headings has changed
somewhat, but the general population area or element covered has remained
substantially the same. In other words, a considerable part of the history of American
sociology has involved the selection of a population group or a life area, and its
scientific ex- 1 Raymond Kennedy and Ruby Jo Reeves Kennedy, "Sociology in
American Colleges," The American Sociological Review (October, 1942), pp. 661-676.
307 This content downloaded from 164.73.224.2 on Thu, 14 Jan 2016 19:39:53 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 308 SOCIAL FORCES ploitation
within the larger sociological framework of reference. THE CHILD AS WELFARE

OBJECTIVE It is not unlikely that sociologists have been influenced in their attitude
toward childhood as an area for scientific exploitation by the way in which the child
came into their professional province. The child came to the serious attention of the
modern world as an object of tender solicitude and of organized welfare endeavor. It
was as such that the child was first regarded by sociologists. This was wholly natural,
for the desire for social uplift was a part of the background out of which sociology
arose. With this original primary emphasis upon social amelioration, the welfare of the
child became an obvious and logical objective. The emphasis in the scientific approach
to human welfare was upon prevention, and the prevention of social problems was
interpreted to mean, if it meant anything, the promotion of the well-being of children.
Thus naturally in the course of time, the child became the largest concern in the field of
social work, both in the number of workers employed and in the amount of moneys
expended. Thus, too, courses in sociology which dealt with the child were of the
problem kind, and emphasized ameliorative measures. These have been referred to
customarily as courses in Child Welfare and they constitute an integral part of the
course offerings by sociology departments. The Kennedys have shown2 them to place
fourteenth in the general rank order of specific courses in sociology. THE CHIID AS
SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT In recent years, another approach to child study and problems
has come to be made by social scientists, and sociology naturally has shared in this
development. This newer approach can be summarized most tersely perhaps by saying
that the child is regarded as a scientific concept rather than as a welfare objective. In
other words, the child is seen as a functioning reality in whose development are
combined the various specialized problems of particular groups of scientific students.
Childhood, in short, serves as a project study, drawn from life rather than from the
laboratory or library, in which may be observed various personality and societal
processes. To say, then, that the child emerges as a scientific concept does not imply an
approach that is theoretic or academic, as the phrase might indicate, but an intensely
practi-cal one, especially for purposes of scientific research and analysis. It makes the
child's socialization and social development a distinctive and legitimate scientific area
for sociologists, just as it has been for psychologists and psychiatrists. SOCIOLOGY
AND THE AREA OF CHILDHOOD Thinking in terms of the realities of a functioning
society, there are a number of reasons for sociologists to center much of their work
around the child. Whether one begins from the point of view of group processes and
analyzes them in terms of their simple beginnings, or whether one makes a lengthwise
historical approach to the processes of personality formation and development, one is
led in either event directly to the area of childhood. Some of the more obvious relationships between this area and the scope of con-temporary sociological thought will be
indicated in brief form. 1. The Sociological Conception of Personality. Contemporary
sociologists conceive of the human personality as a product of social conditioning. In
this process, two sets of conditioning factors are recognized as of outstanding
importance. One of these is the interactive experience of life within the group.
Sociologists discuss this currently under the headings of "social interaction" or "the role
of the group." But the influence of relationships with other persons is modified or
qualified constantly by what these other persons have learned, i.e., their cultural

heritages. Thus we identify the second set of conditioning factors as the cultural ones,
comprehending the more or less accepted group ways of doing and thinking. These, of
course, are sociological commonplaces today. They are recalled here because of their
implications, not fully recognized as yet by many contemporary sociologists. Three of
these implications are emphasized here. The first is the obvious fact that the social
conditioning of the personality during the first years of life is of primary importance.
Not only are the factors operating during this period the first to condition the individual
but there are no or few counter influences to overcome. All this is but another way of
stating that the basic patterns of personality are laid during the period of childhood. The
second implication is that the sociological processes of personality formation can best
be 2 Ibid., p. 666. This content downloaded from 164.73.224.2 on Thu, 14 Jan 2016
19:39:53 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE FAMILY 309
studied during the earlier stages. There are a number of reasons why this is so. The
relative lack of counter and complicating factors has been referred to. There is a
simplicity and directness about the process during the first years, apt not to be
duplicated later on. The process takes place on a smaller scale; the groups within which
the child interacts and the culture transmitting process operate on a smaller scale than is
found in the latter stages of life. Something akin to controlled conditions can be set up
for children: an opportunity apt to be lacking when the subjects studied are older. In
other words, the whole range of experimental studies in personality formation is
confined in large measure to the area of child life. Finally, there is the implication that in
the processes of personality formation the role of the family is very important. The
family is the first group in which almost every person begins his or her life. The first
experience in living comes within the family. These experiences are repeated over and
over again. A child lives around 2200 days with its family before beginning its first
grade work with a school group. Again, these first experiences in the family have an
emotional tone because they are with one's parents and other siblings. Furthermore, our
first contacts with our culture come in and through the family. The family not only
introduces the child to the culture, but also interprets it and evaluates it. In short, the
social development of the personality is in large measure the story of the social
development of the child. This is the inevitable implication of the sociological approach
to personality-a conclusion similar to that of the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. In this
approach, the role of the family is predominant, and the family is the one institution
whose scientific study falls most clearly within the province of the sociologist. 2.
Cultural Continuities and Discontinuities. Viewed in retrospect, the culture of any
society is a changing stream in which cultural continuities and discontinuities are
occurring constantly. The more precise study of these, in their varying aspects and
respective roles, falls ordinarily within the province of the culture historians and
students of social processes. The point of our emphasis here is that the child is the focal
point of this recurring relationship between the culture of successive generations.
Turning to cultural continuity, it is apparent that the child is the carrier and connecting
link between the cultures of succeeding generations. This is a fact of very great
importance, for, viewed in terms of social process, it makes the relation of adult to child
as important, if not more so, than that of adult to adult. Groves has already emphasized

this in these words: "When society is conceived as a functioning process, a continuing

outgoiIng in a way suggestive of the individual consciousness which carries the past
into the present and establishes purposes directed toward the future, it is certain that the
relationship of adult with child has in this cultural flow a more pregnant meaning than
the contact of adult with adult."3 Such relative emphasis, it is at once apparent, is far
different from that which one finds in the literature of sociology. Once the foregoing
role of the child is grasped, it follows that the transmission of culture from one
generation to another is essentially the process of child rearing and indoctrination. Thus
arises the conception of education as the whole process whereby the child is inducted
into his culture, and whereby through the child a cultural heritage is transferred from
one generation to the next. Such, for example, is the concept of education manifest on
every page in John Dewey's outstanding book on Democracy and Education or in every
article in the symposium on "Education and the Cultural Process," as published in the
May 1943 issue of the American Journsal of Sociology. "No living culture," writes
Herskovits, "exists that is not in a constant state of change."4 Cultural discontinuities, in
other words, are constantly occurring in the life of societies. There is, how-ever, this
revolutionary change in our recent attitudes toward them. Whereas formerly they were
for the most part opposed or tolerated with slow and grudging assent, today we
welcome them and seek to promote them. The purpose of a great deal of the
contemporary educational process is to train children for cultural discontinuities. We
educate mostly to change and raise status, not to maintain it. We now study the wisdom
of the fathers to improve upon it. The lore of the past is on the agenda of education
mostly for purposes of revision. Children are trained beyond their families and class.
The personalities of budding youth are to be recon- 3 Ernest R. Groves, The Family and
Its Social Ftunc-tions (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1940), p. 16. 4Melville J.
Herskovits, "Education and Cultural Dynamics," American Journal of Sociology (May,
1943), p. 737. This content downloaded from 164.73.224.2 on Thu, 14 Jan 2016
19:39:53 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 310 SOCIAL FORCES
structed, not confirmed. Contemporary educators propose to achieve the reconstruction
of the social order, not the maintenance of the cultural status quo. Training the child for
cultural discontinuities is but the application for reverse purposes of the same principle
applied in training for cultural continuity. It is the principle of culture conditioning,
based upon the conviction of the plasticity of human nature. Both the maintenance of
the cultural status quo, and the manipulation of free and frequent revisions in it rest four
square upon what people believe they can do to people, i.e., primarily to children. In
summary, it is the contention of this paper that both of the foregoing processes are
primarily child centered. Facing the realities of a functioning society, the child is the
center of cultural processes. The child is the carrier of the culture. It is the cultural bond
that ties one generation to another. Child rearing is the index and weather vane of
cultural change. 3. Behavior Problems and the Socialization of the Child. The longer the
sociologists' concern with crime, delinquency, and behavior of all sorts continues, the
more one comes to be disturbed by the suspicion that our past approach has been from
the wrong direction. We have, in times past, started with problem cases and worked
back to general processes; we have selected picturesque and intriguing factors and

attempted to assess their role; while all the time, we might have started more
intelligently with the child and studied the normal processes of its development,
ultimately coming to an understanding of deviant behavior in social relationships. In the
medical field, the study of disease follows and is built upon an under-standing of bodily
structure and process; a similar procedure in sociology would make the study of
juvenile delinquency but an incidental postscript to the study of the socialization of the
child. 4. Group Relations and the Child. The sociology of child development is an
important part of the science of group relations. Children are a definite population
element. All societies recognize the distinctive existence of groups organized on an age
basis. Anthropologists have shown the prevalence and importance of the age
classificatory device in primitive cultures,5 and more recently sociologists have come to
emphasize its role in contemporary society. 6 The ascription of the child's status and the
ways for the child and youth to achieve status-these are the heart of the class system of
any society; the status of the child element in the population, the factors affecting its
status, and its relationship to other population elements-these are a major part of the
problem of group relations in sociology. There are other and important phases of a
sociology of childhood. The foregoing discussion is intended to be suggestive and
illustrative rather than exhaustive. Possibly it will serve to indicate that a sociologist
specializing in the field of child development is not merely a sentimental reformist, but
may even have the legitimate interests of a Brahmin sociologist. More important,
however, is the hope that this paper may serve as a part of the agenda for post-war
planning in sociology. It is dear, even now, that our colleges and universities are
undergoing important changes as a result of the war, and that the post-war period will
see significant changes in the curriculum in general and in the specific course
adaptations of particular departments. In such event, social scientists may find the child
a challenging pattern of operating actuality, and sociologists may see in the social
development of the child a major area for scientific exploration and an intriguing project
for pedagogical exploitation. For this is the stimulating challenge of the child as a
scientific concept, that in it so many of the basic principles of sociology and of the
unexplored problems of sociological research are combined into an operating pattern, at
a time in the life of the individual, and in a stage of simplified development, when they
may be most readily understood. 5 Ralph Linton, "Age and Sex Categories," The
American Sociological Review (October, 1942), pp. 589-604; and Linton, "A Neglected
Aspect of Social Organization," American Journal of Sociology (May 1940), pp. 870887. 6 Leonard S. Cottrell, "The Adjustment of the Individual to His Age and Sex
Roles," The American Sociological Review (October 1942), pp. 617-621; Talcott
Parsons, "Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United States," ibid., pp. 604-617;
Earl H. Bell, "Age Group Conflicts and Our Changing Culture," Social Forces
(December 1933), pp. 237-243. This content downloaded from 164.73.224.2 on Thu, 14
Jan 2016 19:39:53 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions