ABSTRACT
This is an unsettling time for parents. Yet while family life changes, young children’s needs remain consistent. Children need attention, encouragement, continuity, and predictable guidelines, just as they always have. We live in a time when it is often difficult for families to provide young children with what they require. It is often said that, in the past, family life was better structured to meet children’s needs. This is debatable. When one looks past the atypical 1950s, one sees that factors from high maternal mortality to labor’s exploitation of the young all too often shaped children’s lives. Yet as difficult as life was for many young people in the past, one cannot help feeling that there was some special ingredient present then that is missing from today’s mix.
