The Delinquent Child and the Home
Chapter 7: The Child from the Crowded Home: the Problem of Confusion
Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott
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THE causes of neglect in the family thus far discussed have been the obvious ones of poverty, sickness, death, incapacity, family discord, and degradation. Other more subtle factors may influence the situation to the child's undoing. If the family is large, if the home is crowded, if the mother is distracted by the presence of many children and can give little attention to any one of them; if the burden of custody and discipline during her absence falls upon the eldest or upon the eldest at home; if there are relatives or lodgers lending complexity to an already confused situation; if there is an unsympathetic step-parent and a mixed family of children, there is little hope that the nervous system of the child, started unfavorably on its career, will have its proper chance to mature into self-control, or the character to develop into dignified manhood or womanhood.
The question of the size of the family is an important one which often has much to do with the care and attention bestowed upon the individual child. In considering this question, however, it is necessary to know whether all the children are of common parentage; that is, whether there has been remarriage on the part of either father or mother. For it is clear that a larger number of children of the same parents will often give rise to a less confused situation than a smaller number not related to each other or related only by a single parent. It is interesting, therefore, that in 45 out of the 584 families of delinquent boys, for whom information was secured, the family group included children of different parents. Among the girls, the mixed family was found in 20 out of 157 cases.
The following table shows the actual number of children in the families of the boys and girls for whom schedules were obtained.
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| Number of Cbildren in Family | NUMBER OF FAMILIES OF | Number of Cbildren in Family | NUMBER OF FAMILIES OF | |||
| Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | |||
| 1 | 30 | 25 | 11 | 15 | 1 | |
| 2 | 37 | 25 | 12 | 8 | 1 | |
| 3 | 82 | 19 | 13 | 2 | 1 | |
| 4 | 88 | 17 | 14 | 4 | 1 | |
| 5 | 70 | 17 | 15 | 2 | 0 | |
| 6 | 84 | 15 | 16 | 0 | 0 | |
| 7 | 71 | 18 | 17 | 2 | 0 | |
| 8 | 43 | 4 | 18 | 1 | 1 | |
| 9 | 28 | 6 | ||||
| 10 | 17 | 6 | Total | 584 | 157 | |
From this table it appears that among the families of the delinquent boys, there were in 277 cases (47 per cent) six or more children, and in 122 cases (21 per cent) eight or more. Among the families of the girls, in 54 cases (34 per cent) there were six or more children, and in 21 (13 per cent) eight or more, a smaller proportion of large families than among the boys.[1] Nevertheless, some of the girls were members of very large families; one girl, for example, belonged to a German family where there were 18 children, and another to a Russian family where there had been 14.
The question occurs whether in any considerable number of cases the place of the child in the family, that is, the fact of the child being the eldest or youngest, had any bearing upon his delinquency. It is obvious, for example, that in cases of poverty, where it is necessary for the mother to go to work, or where she is dead and the father is unable to pay a housekeeper, the eldest child may have to bear the burdens naturally belonging to the head of the family. It is likewise true, of course, that in the case of a marriage between very young persons, the eldest child may fail to receive the amount of discipline which would be given if the parents were more mature, and which may, in fact, be given to the younger children of the same family. It is of interest, therefore, that in 138 cases (24 per cent of the total number) the boy who was
(117) brought to court was the eldest child in the family [2] It has been shown that this often means a large number of younger brothers and sisters. If the father dies, this boy is the only person to whom the bewildered mother can turn for help, and he is often expected, even when very young, to help carry the burden of the family. An interesting case of this sort is found in the story told by a Swedish woman who had seven children and had lost her husband when the youngest child was five days old. She tried washing as a means of supporting the family, but she was greatly handicapped and finally let the eldest boy, who was thirteen, leave school and go to work. He got into bad company, began to go wrong, and was ultimately brought into court. The mother thinks she is responsible for his delinquency because she put him to work when he was too young and too easily tempted; but she says that she and "the children needed his help so much." A similar case is that of the eldest boy in a Polish family of four children. The family had always been very poor and had always lived in a bad neighborhood. The father died of tuberculosis, and the mother tried very hard to support the family by scrubbing and washing. It was of course necessary for the boy to go to work as soon as he could get his working papers, but the men in the place where he found a job were a rough, drunken crowd who had a very bad influence over him. The offense which first brought him into court was merely stealing a watermelon from a freight car, but he has now been sent to the county jail for a year on the charge of shooting a man in a quarrel. He had been working steadily up to the time of his arrest, trying to care for his mother and his three sisters.
Or it may be that the child on whom the burden falls is not the eldest in fact, but the eldest available; that is, the eldest under working age when those over school age are already employed. In many instances the assumption of these responsibilities will
(118) lead to a distressingly sobering effect upon the small housekeeper; but in others there will be results like those in a case already referred to where the little eight-year-old boy became the family housekeeper. In a similar case where the mother had committed suicide, the eldest child in the family, a girl who was later brought into court as delinquent, had kept house when only nine years old for the father and the younger children. The father, who drank, was a day laborer but worked irregularly; the little girl had the discouraging task of caring for a family which a shiftless father was unwilling to support, and before many years she also had shirked responsibilities. When she was fifteen years old her father and her grandmother brought her to court and said that she had been for some time " beyond control." She was sent to Geneva but ran away and is now supposed to be an inmate of a house of prostitution.
On the other hand, of course, in the case of a family where the home is crowded, where the conditions either within the house or in the neighborhood are bad, there is less chance for training in the case of younger children than in the case of the older ones, because with the birth of each child the strain upon the family resources becomes greater, the opportunity of the mother to safeguard the child is lessened, and he is at the mercy not only of the older members of his own family but of the disorderly persons of the neighborhood
There are many illustrations among the family paragraphs of confused family groupings and overcrowded homes that children forsake eagerly for the wide freedom of the street. Year after year, ever since the establishment of the court, small boys have been brought in for such offenses as sleeping under houses, sleeping in hallways, sleeping in barns, in sheds, basements, and similar places. In many cases the child is trying to escape from cruel or brutal parents, but sometimes the simple fact of an uncomfortable, overcrowded home is undoubtedly the cause. The case of a Polish boy who was brought to court for sleeping in barns when the alternative was sharing a small apartment with a family of to has been referred to. An Irish boy nine years old was found sleeping under a house and was brought to court as a "vagrant." In his home there were 11 persons in a three-
(119) -room apartment, and the space under the house must have seemed peaceful and spacious in contrast. A German boy, who was one of five children, was brought to court as "incorrigible" for sleeping under sidewalks. Both parents, however, were drunken and immoral, and the home in which he refused to stay was described as "four filthy rooms in the basement of a dilapidated old cottage." A little Italian boy was found sleeping in a haystack; he was one of six children; his father was paralyzed, and his mother had gone to live with her sister. In the home of a German family there were 17 children; the father drank heavily and finally died from the effects of drink; the mother, who could speak very little English, went out washing, and supplemented the family earnings still further by adding boarders to the already overcrowded house. It is not difficult to understand why the boy preferred "sleeping out nights." It is undoubtedly the discomforts of home, quite as much as the " roving disposition " so often referred to, which create the semi-homeless little boys who, in the words of the court records, "wander the streets by day and sleep in barns at night."
In an earlier chapter[2] it was pointed out that the problem of the step-parent was likely to be one of family friction and on that account its discussion seemed more appropriate here than in the chapter dealing with orphan children.
Data furnished by the court records[4] show that in the case
(120) Of 372 boys and of 141 girls, the natural parent after death or divorce had been replaced by a step-parent. Here again, however, the actual numbers are much larger than the court records indicate, for in a large number of cases the fact that the parent is a step-parent is not mentioned, except when special inquiry is made. Data obtained from the family schedules show, therefore, that among the 1903-04 boys and the Geneva girls for whom family schedules were secured, 84 boys and 36 girls had a step-parent; that is, the family schedules show that 14 per cent of the boys and 23 per cent of the girls had a step-parent in contrast to the 3 per cent and 5 per cent indicated by the data obtained from the court records.
There are, of course, many cases[5] in which the fact of having a step-parent seems to have a very direct connection with the delinquency of the boy or girl. Two young Bohemian boys who belonged to a family of six children, lost their mother before they were ten years old. Just at the age when the boys most needed wise and careful guidance the father married a young girl. Soon they got in with bad companions and the youngest would never live at home. The situation was complicated by the father's suicide, and both boys became delinquent wards of the court and one is in the Bridewell now. Again, in the case of one boy, a "repeater" who had been sent to the John Worthy School three times, it was said that he "went to the bad" after the mother's death. His father married again but his stepmother was "pretty hard on him" and was "always finding fault"; he did not improve much under probation, and according to the schedule "the stepmother seems to think he never will." Another case of interest in this connection is that of a Bohemian family whose home is now broken up. The father was not poor; he was
(121) a money lender (" banker") as well as a carpenter; but he was brutal and had injured the boy by kicking him when he was a little child. He married three times and this boy, the child of the second wife, was cruelly treated by the third wife. In another case, that of a Russian Jewish family, the father had had four wives and 12 children. The boy that was brought to court was one of six children by the first wife, who never immigrated but died in Russia when the boy was five years old. The boy's first stepmother also had six children, and for a time after her death the younger children were in the Jewish Home for the Friendless. The third wife was very cruel to all the children and the father divorced her. The father himself is very indifferent about the children, and although six of them have left home he does not seem to care, and says they "were never satisfied with any stepmother."
A German family in which there are three sets of children is an illustration of a mixed family in which confusion prevailed although the home was "good enough." The girl who became delinquent lost her mother when she was four. Both she and her older sister went wrong, and while the father and stepmother attributed the girl's downfall to the influence of a public amusement place to which she went, it is significant that the stepmother could do nothing to hold either one of them.
The court records also furnish a good many illustrations of cases in which the girl's relations to her stepmother seem to have had a direct connection with her appearance in court.
A typical case is that of Mamie, a fifteen-year-old girl whose father was a German laborer and whose stepmother brought her into court as incorrigible because she went to dance halls and stayed away from home at night. The girl claimed that the stepmother ill-treated her and found fault because she spent her own money and did not turn in all her wages. A similarly typical case is that of Maggie, a fifteen-year-old American girl who had a third stepmother. The girl said she needed to get out of the home surroundings, and claimed that her parents had several times put her out of the house so that she had been compelled to seek a room elsewhere.
Sometimes there is just general incompetence and shiftlessness, which manifests itself in domestic as well as in industrial
(122) and other relationships. This may be illustrated by the case of an Irish-American family of four children; the father was out of work; the mother incompetent and shiftless; the home very dirty and dilapidated. The boy who was brought to court at fifteen was earning good wages and was the only one in the family who was working. Another illustration of the same point is a German family with eight children; the father a teamster, the mother not very intelligent, the home very crowded and dirty, the neighborhood rough. When the boy was fifteen he was arrested for stealing grain from freight cars, and although first put on probation he is now at Pontiac. Not very different is the case of a German family with twelve children, one of whom, a boy of fourteen, was brought into court for stealing grain. The father is a pipe fitter who earns good wages but who drinks and is often out of work. They have recently bought a six-room house but have a mortgage of $2000 to pay, and at the present time no one in the family is at work. The mother is shiftless and very lax in her control of the children, and the home is dirty and crowded.
A more unhappy case was one in which there was not only lack of sympathy but in which the parents were evidently more interested in their dry goods store than in their children. The mother took charge of the store while the father went out to sell goods; they had had five children, three of whom had died of tuberculosis. The boy, who was brought to court three times, was "not on good terms" with his parents; the mother said he was "crazy" and refused to allow the younger brother to associate with him. The record says, " The mother cared more for business than for the boys." In the case of another boy, a "repeater" who had been in court four times, the father was a coal dealer and was said to "care for nothing but making money." He was so stern that the boys were afraid of him, while the mother was not very strong and "always too tired to take much care of the children." This boy, who was brought to court first for truancy at the age of nine and sent to the parental school, was brought in the fourth time when he was thirteen charged with being incorrigible. His parents said that they could not control him, that he was thoroughly unreliable; and they were evidently relieved to have him sent to the John Worthy School.
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And then there are the pathetic instances of a complete lack of understanding or interest on the part of the parents though they may be efficient and conform with the formal requirements of their parenthood. There is the case of a German family of 11 children in which the boy who had been very bad and in court four times has now run away from home and the parents plainly " hope he will not come back." Or there is the case of another boy who came from what is known as "a good home" but who had been in the John Worthy School three times. The probation officer thinks that the boy has finally done well and that he will be all right now that he is away from his old companions; but "there is no sympathy between the mother and son; the mother says that the boy is very bad indeed, that he was too proud to work and too good looking to do anything but wear good clothes." A Danish boy who was first brought to court at the age of twelve and then came in again repeatedly, was sent twice to the John Worthy School and once to St. Charles, although he had a " good home"; but during his mother's illness he became very wild and at this time when he most needed sympathetic care, the record states that "the father was hard on him and thought him `a bad lot.' " Similarly, a Russian boy who was in court three times and finally sent to the John Worthy School for a year, came from a clean, decent home, but the schedule showed that his parents, who were respectable, industrious people, "evidently did not understand the boy" and taunted him with having been arrested.
Sometimes the parents may really dislike the child, as in the case of a German family with three children. The father was a carpenter but drank and gambled and was idle most of the time; the mother washed in a laundry and worked very hard. The father "did not like the boy," was unkind to him, and brought him into court saying he could do nothing with him, and finally refused to allow him to live at home.In studying the home circumstances of these children it seemed important to ascertain the age of the parents at marriage, since if parents are too young to assume the responsibilities of married life, the effect upon the training and discipline of the children will probably be harmful. Tables 23 and 24, on the following page, make clear the fact that this was the case in many instances.
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| Age at Marriage | Fathers | Mothers | ||
| Number | Percent | Number | Percent | |
| Under 16 years | .. | .. | 24[6] | 5.6 |
| 16 and under 18 | 7 | 1.7 | 62 | 14.4 |
| 18 and under 20 | 31 | 7.7 | 87 | 20.2 |
| 20 and under 25 | 169 | 41.8 | 198 | 46.1 |
| 25 and under 30 | 137 | 33.9 | 44 | 10.2 |
| 30 and over | 60 | 14.9 | 15 | 3.5 |
| Total | 404 | 100.0 | 430 | 100.0 |
| Age at Marriage | Fathers | Mothers | ||
| Number | Percent | Number | Percent | |
| Under 16 years | .. | .. | 7 | 7.4 |
| 16 and under 18 | 2 | 2.3 | 12 | 12.7 |
| 18 and under 20 | 6 | 6.9 | 23 | 24.5 |
| 20 and under 25 | 39 | 44.8 | 37 | 39.4 |
| 25 and under 30 | 20 | 23.0 | 11 | 11.7 |
| 30 and over | 20 | 23.0 | 4 | 4.3 |
| Total | 87 | 100 | 94 | 100.0 |
It appears from these tables that a considerable number of these children were under the care of very young mothers; 20 per cent of the mothers both of the boys and of the girls were married before they were eighteen, and many were younger than this; thus 6 per cent of the mothers of the boys and ; per cent of the girls' mothers were tinder sixteen when they were married.
(125) The ages of the fathers are of course higher than those of the mothers, but it is significant that 9 per cent of the fathers both of the boys and of the girls were married before they were twenty.
While it would be impossible to connect the fact of any child's delinquency directly with the fact that his parents were too young to rear him properly, yet there are cases to be found where the immaturity and youthful inexperience of the father or mother have undoubtedly been among the factors tending to deprive the child of the necessary training and guidance.
There is, for example, the case of an Italian boy whose father was twenty and whose mother was seventeen when they were married. The boy was brought in first as incorrigible and later, on four different occasions, for stealing. His parents, however, did not "think stealing very bad," but were very lighthearted and "refused to take the charges seriously." There is the boy whose mother was married when she was twelve and was soon deserted; she came with her child to Chicago and tried to support herself by washing for a time, but she later married again. The boy became hopelessly delinquent; at ten he was brought into court as incorrigible, at eleven as disorderly, at thirteen for stealing. Again, in the case of a boy "whose parents both drank and whose mother kept a low rooming house," it is of interest to know that the mother was thirteen and the father seventeen when they were married and that four of the children had run away from home.
It is not maintained that such unfavorable conditions as have been described in this chapter inevitably lead to delinquency. It is clear that the problem presented is much less serious than that of real misfortune or degradation, but although institutional care is less needed in such cases, they make equally plain the need of such care and oversight as the court alone can give.
The probation officer frequently helps to bring order into the disorderly home and she can often give advice, not only about the children, but about the management of the house, which the mother sorely needs. In such families the officer who is faithful and patient, resourceful and understanding, soon comes to be regarded not merely as an agent of the court but as a welcome friend.