ABSTRACT
IN its infancy the child is so closely linked to its parents that it is dependent upon them for all excursion. Visits to the Centre, therefore, are of mother and/or father and child together. And since in the Centre is gathered so much that the young family can use at this time, it happens that the frequency of their visits gives the observer the regular contact that he needs to enable him to study and describe successive phases in the functional growth of the family, of which the processes of weaning from the breast and from the ‘skirt’ are outstanding examples. But when it comes to the child's schooldays, the observer is not so fortunate. The Centre has no school of its own, so that the school life of the child is a closed book to us. The parents, too, are shut off from this school life, so that in present-day conditions the education of the child does not represent a further phase in the functional development of the family as a whole.
