most take the skin of! your finger. Yet to me the most fascinating fact of infancy is that a baby a couple of months old, at a time when he can't talk, stand, sit, reach with his hand or hold his head steady, still knows how to smile and does so delightedly when his mother greets him. He is clearly intended to love and to evoke love from the beginning. Even stuffy people fall into baby talk with him. This is not just sentimental talk. It is a fact that infants who have long been starved for company and affection, for instance in cold-hearted, understaffed in¬stitutions, may wither in body and spirit. They lose all joy in doing things and seeing people. At a year of age they may spend their days lying sadly on their backs, rolling their heads from side to side. If the neg¬lect lasts too long, the responsiveness to life may be im¬possible to resuscitate and they may grow up apathetic, unloving people. A certain form of the insanity called schizophrenia has been seen to develop before the age of one year in babies who have received attention, but of an unfriendly quality. Such tragedies are rare. But they prove that love is as vital as calories and that the baby's personality is being shaped from the start by the mother's and father's attitudes. From this it follows that everything which can be done to help parents feel comfortable and loving will be beneficial to the baby, everything which makes them feel tense will be unfortunate. Anyone will recognize this who has talked to a mother who contrasts the devas¬tating feeding conflict in which she became involved with her first child in the days when rigid feeding was the law, with the happy results in a second child when he and she were encouraged to behave more naturally. Erikson has said that in the first year of life the baby acquires his basic sense of trust, trust in his parents' loving ministrations, and through that, trust in himself. In the period from perhaps 1 to 3 years he gets his sense of autonomy. He learns to walk and he never stops walking. He explores, he feels the shapes of things, he climbs, he shakes everything that isn't nailed down, he tastes paper, specks of dust, the dog's tail. He grad¬ually goes longer distances from his mother. He is testing the world, he is testing and exercising his own skills, he is building self-confidence and independence. But he is not sailing off into space like a released bal¬loon. He is more like a man learning to swim by pushing himself backward from a dock but holding tightly to a rope with which he jerks himself in at the first twinge of anxiety. The bold explorer rushes crying for his mother wh a stranger approaches too suddenly. This is the age when a mother complains that her baby cries whenev she leaves the room. He is finding the exact degree to which he wants to be separate from and close to his mother. He learns to say "no" not only when it is something he doesn't want to do but when it is something he does. We see that he is deliberately practicing autonomy for its own sake, compulsively, like an uneasy man doing exercises—just to get muscles. Secure parents take this new, this semi-autonomous child, in their stride, sensing that he now requires tactful, imaginative handling. We know that the child between 1 and 3 is vulner¬able, terribly vulnerable, to the attitudes of his parents. If he is regularly shamed for his accidents, accidents in the general and in the sanitary sense, he acquires a sense of shame and unworthiness. If he is excessively dominated he becomes defiant or submissive. If he is constantly warned that the parent will no longer love him unless he behaves differently, his whole personality will be poisoned with uneasiness and antagonism. By the age of 3 or 4 the child can afford to fuss les about his independent rights and can turn more tively to people and ideas. He is enthusiastic abouttTie people he loves, the things they do. He wants to feel like them and do things the way they do them. He is curious and intensely creative. Each new experience fires his imagination and he must recreate the dram with himself playing a major role. His emotional close ness to people makes him not only experience thetfr triumphs but their injuries. The sight of a cripple makes him anxiously imagine the feeling of being crippled. The boy becomes increasingly aware that his desti is to become manly, in the pattern of his father arid other admired males. He plays at driving cars, shoot¬ing guns, building skyscrapers, going to work. The girl who is devoted to her mother takes joy in turning to doll care and other feminine fascinations. 6 As the boy comes to identify himself with his father and the men, he also takes a more romantic view of adored mother and is apt to insist when 3 or 4 that he will marry her some day. Though this arouses some feeling of rivalry with his old man it does not seriously impair the good relationship when the father is both manly and loving. In fact it seems to help the boy learn to enjoy rather than fear competition. But if'Uhe father has been uncomfortable with his son all along and the small boy has been insecure, too tightly tied to his mother, clinical experience indicates that the ipetitive situation becomes a painful one for him, accentuating his uneasiness with his father and his dependence on his mother. When such attitudes become crystallized, they contribute to many neuroses of later life and impair the growing boy's capacity to compete in the world of men and to become an adequate father his turn. Similarly, the little girl who has never gotten along asily with her mother may, in this period, become more hostile to her and turn to her father, not only to adore him romantically but to pattern herself after him, too. ifls whose attachments and ideals become shifted is manner are apt to have more trouble making marriages and to find too little satisfaction in rearing children of their own. This period, then, from about 3 to 6 years, is vital in setting the patterns for each child. The way in which the father and mother get along, the feelings that each parent has for the child will leave a specific imprint n the child's ideals in such matters as what kind of a person he or she expects to be, how he or she will make out with his own sex, what he or she will be looking for in marriage, and what his or her attitudes toward sons and daughters will be. When we add these first three phases of childhood together, the all important common denominator is, of course, the parents, good parents, truly loving par¬ents. You know why I say truly loving. I mean not only ots of love but the well-rounded, easy-going kind of love. For there are also the lopsided varieties. Then there are the young children in the thousands who are being neglected in their own homes. Every social worker, teacher, physician sees such children reg¬ularly. We say, "If only we could find good foster care or a first class nursery school!" Too often none are available. We can see such a child's personality being warped right in front of our eyes. We know that the chances are great he will grow up irresponsible, self- centered, impulsive. He won't be able to hold a job. He will make life miserable for his family. He may become antisocial. None of us would claim that we could reach or sal¬vage all these children. But we certainly know that some loving care in a stable atmosphere for even a few hours a day would help. If we are serious about fostering healthy personalities here is a place to begin. Who will speak for these children if we don't? They say that it costs on the average of $30,000 to catch, convict and imprison a felon. Society pays this bill because it be¬lieves it has to. We are getting ready to spend tens of billions a year for armament because we now believe it is worth while. But in effect we said we couldn't spend ten million extra last year for mental health and for child welfare because we couldn't afford it. There are two faults. We who know something about children's needs don't speak up with enough conviction when questions of social services, welfare, social security are being considered. We also have failed to carry out controlled studies and investigations and convincing demonstrations to prove to others that our solutions are worth while, even economical. In the period from about 6 to 12 years, the child is no longer satisfied with make-believe grown-up activi¬ties. It is an even greater challenge to try to act like the other boys he sees. He wants to dress like them, have his hair cut like them, use the word "ain't" if they do. In order to free himself to follow these new patterns, he seems to have to rebel against his parents' standards. He deliberately turns sloppy in his table manners and in his personal appearance. He says "So what!" When he is out in the world of school or the neighborhood, he is on the lookout for opinions of other authorities to use to provoke arguments with his par¬ents. He wants to prove them wrong not so much for their good as for his own justification. He and his schoolmates discuss earnestly what is 7