Ms. Mary Van Stolk, President, The Tree Foundation of Canada, author of The Battered Child in Canada ...Because there is no scientific evidence to support the Judeo-Christian concept that children are born bad, victims of original sin, imps of Satan or evil, the inborn tendency-to-aggression theory, as put forth either in religious or quasiscientific form by Lorenz, Ardrey, et cetera, has not been able to withstand the last ten years of interdisciplinary findings in anthropology, psychology, and neuropsychology. A new field theory on aggression is emerging. Quite simply stated, it would appear that violence is man-made. Where culture stands between the child and its biological needs, a high degree of illness, mental impairment, aggression and crime result. Babies are not born with a predisposition to violence or crime. They will, however, soon adopt all kinds of ways and means of surviving and coping in a violent and destructive environment. As soon as capable, they will push, shove, hit, poke, attack and kill. They will also lie and steal. 'Money see, monkey do' is a firm principle. The human child learns from example. If the home does not expose the child to a violent atmosphere, then the schoolground and television do. The child in the home and school sees the bully. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers and baby-sitters impose a lawlessness of multiple dimensions upon children. In observing these crimes the child notes, not without bitterness, that there are few laws in society and no laws in the family to protect the child... Dr. David R. Offord, Director of Research and Education, Children's Psychiatric Services, Royal Ottawa Hospital, and Professor of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. ...If you take a group of children who have been raised in institutions where bonding has not occurred in the first three years of life, where the child has never had a relationship with one adult where the child's care was paramount in that adult's life, you will find that these children have a tendency to have the following characteristics: they tend to be superficial; they do not trust anyone; they find it difficult to give or receive affection. Maybe you have met some of these people. They sort of put you on, but you get the impression that there is no feeling under the surface. They engage in antisocial acts off and on, sometimes persistently. Where bonding has not occurred early on, it is difficult, or maybe impossible, to do anything over the lifespan of that individual to make up for it. So, if you want to talk about the critical or sensitive period in human beings, it would seem as though the bonding has to take form, has to take shape, certainly by the age of three. If it has not occurred by then, the children do very poorly. They tend to be not so much loners in the sense that you spoke of, Mr. Chairman, but superficially extroverts-charming, but with no depth... Senator Inman: I come from Prince Edward Island, and 10 years ago we never thought of locking our doors. Now one does not dare to go out even in the daytime without locking doors. Many young criminals come from homes where they are loved, nurtured and given things. There is no reason why they should go out and steal. For instance, a horrible murder was committed a year ago, and the youngsters who committed the crime came from nice homes. Dr. Barker: Certainly, if I might speak for a moment about the issue of coming from "nice homes". It is not uncommon for many of the patients I have been involved with in court work, usually as a result of murder, to have come from "nice homes" and to have never had any previous problems. They have been boy scouts, and so on, and the community has been shocked that they should have committed such a crime. To me, the explanation for that is that in the case of the middle class, or better, "nice home", one is not looking at the emotional atmosphere of that home with sufficiently high magnification, and when you do, you see that the quality of the relationship between the parents and that child is decidedly deficient in the factors we are speaking of. This leads me to say again that we need better measures and better indices of the emotional quality of life for a young child. We need better means of measuring it. It does not follow that the family who is outstanding in the community, has not been in obvious difficulty and is successful, has necessarily provided adequately, from the emotional point of view, for their children. In fact, I think the Children's Aid people will frequently suggest that there is middle and upper class neglect and abuse in the form of firing children off to camps and schools, and everywhere else, in a socially acceptable fashion, on the one hand, and yet not treating children as unique individuals and with empathy and affection on the other. The Chairman: ...The important thing, therefore, is to engage in public debate on all these subjects. Is that not one of the things we must do? Dr. Barker: I think so. Unfortunately, the things that attract public debate are sensational crimes and violent abuse of young children, which are made for the media, and the business of love and empathy for one-year olds, and support services for young families, does not make quite that kind of copy... Senator Thompson: You are almost suggesting to the committee that we should not be stressing so much the focus on the individual but that we should be looking at preventive measures in society. Am I correct on that? Dr. Barker: That is correct. Perhaps if you are confronted with a case of typhoid fever, where a person is feverish and needs urgent nursing care and treatment, and the alternative is to spend your time putting chlorine in the water supply, one rushes to the person who is in need. I think there has to be some debate, as we draw near the limit of our resources, to help the helpless (and when we in psychiatry also have to wonder about the efficacy of our individual treatment anyway) to curtail the number of us and the amount of resources we have to go in and help in the crisis, compared to the number of people put to work in chlorinating the water supply and giving lectures on sanitation - to follow through the analogy of physical illness. Senator Thompson: Will you qualify what you mean by preventive programs? You keep suggesting to us that we need to have great courage. What are these things that you want us to do? Dr. Barker: What would be rewarding with regard to the reduction of crime in our society, and the reduction of mental illness and morbidity in society, would be to increase the awareness of the general public to the crucial nature, the formative nature of the early years of a child, to make moves, politically or with the media, that would give a higher status to homemaking and parenting, to improve or institute better parenting education. Senator Thompson: That is really my question to you. I do not see anything controversial in those, unless it would be that we should try to discourage young mothers from working, which may be against the trend. My real question is, what are the controversial suggestions? Dr. Barker: I read in the transcript when Senator McGrand was making his speech, an honourable Senator asked: Does this mean that you want people to have a licence for pregnancy? Does it mean we want some kind of user-pay insurance? If there are high-risk parents wanting to have a second, third, fourth or fifth child, should they contribute to a fund which will pay for the upkeep of that child when it needs to go to prison or mental hospital? I think the whole issue is controversial, whether you withdraw money from actual treatment personnel or facilities and put it into preventive programs. The question of abortion is eminently controversial. People like Seeley have said of our social system that it is as though we favour catabolism but oppose breakdown products; he is looking, I think, at the whole question of materialism, consumerism, and competition, and what that does to the capacity of people to live and love co-operatively together. I am not sure that Seeley, and certainly not myself, would suggest that other social systems have perfected a better way of raising children without pathology, without the adult carnage that we all have to pay for. I do not sense a spirited debate in our society about those issues, though, and I think there should be such a debate. It is controversial, and in my pleas to this group to set up such a committee my fantasy was that if you people want to call heretics before you to question aspects as fundamental as religion and our economic system, nobody is going to vote you out of office. That was my feeling, that this was a safe arena to hear issues of that sort debated. Those cover some of the controversial ones, I think. Senator Croll: Following that question and talking about having two children, the other not being able to get out and all the rest of it, if you look at all of us here, including yourself, that is the way we were brought up, and we are not too bad. Where is the difficulty? Dr. Barker: I would speak for myself, I cannot speak for you. I think that a close look at most of us does not come up particularly rosy. I think the capacity for each of us to respond to other human beings in an affectionate, appropriate and sympathetic manner has been stultified. You may or may not want to call that mental illness, or anything near it. I think that much of the behaviour of the so-called "normal" people in our society is highly questionable. I am not, of course, the first to indicate that, and we are all used to poking fun at psychiatrists who say so. R.D. Laing said it in spades, that by the time we are 15 we are well adjusted to a crazy world. Seeley and others have documented the current madness of our society. I do not think it is fair to say that we are all okay. Senator Croll: We appear okay. Dr. Barker: We do. We're "making it"...