Separation hurts children more than war
In response to a widespread outcry, President Trump has rescinded formally his administration’s policy about forcibly separating children from their parents at the border. Even assuming that there will be a genuine reversal that runs smoothly from now on and that families are reunited successfully, history demonstrates what price will be paid by the affected children. Renowned psychoanalyst and child psychologist (and daughter of Sigmund Freud) Dr. Anna Freud ran her own nurseries in London and studied the problem of childhood separation during World War II, when there were three major evacuations of British children sponsored by the government. Although the situations are different, and the forcible separations children are experiencing now are much worse than those historical evacuations, her conclusions are still relevant.
The British evacuations of children were implemented because government officials believed that once the war started, the Germans would bombard Britain with aerial attacks on civilian centers that would panic the population and cause chaos. The evacuations were designed to leave the work force in place while removing vulnerable populations, such as unaccompanied school-age children, younger children with their mothers, expectant mothers and adults with disabilities. In other words, evacuation of unaccompanied children in Britain was a matter of national security in a real shooting war.
Nearly 4 million people, virtually all children and their caretakers, were evacuated at one point or another during World War II. There were 393,700 unaccompanied children taken from the London area alone. The unaccompanied children left their homes to live with rural householders and families in areas free from the threat of bombing. In the protection zones, they were able to continue education, in some cases even arriving at the school house accompanied by their teachers and staying together with their classmates thereafter. Historians have acknowledged that circumstances of these evacuations were not ideal. It is clear, however, that they certainly were far superior to the family separations experienced by the forcibly separated immigrant children in the United States today. The British children typically went from poorer neighborhoods and families in the big cities to stay with more affluent rural hosts in private homes. Most important of all, of course, these were entirely voluntary separations. Even so, the separations exacted a high price on the children.
Because many other children were not evacuated and instead remained with their parents even during the fierce aerial bombings of 1940-41, Britain’s experience affords something like a grand social experiment of separation versus keeping families intact during the Blitz. Dr. Anna Freud ran her own nurseries in London during the war and studied the children of the evacuation. Here is what she had to say:
“The war acquires comparatively little significance for children so long as it only threatens their lives, disturbs their material comfort, or cuts their food rations. It becomes enormously significant the moment it breaks up family life and uproots the first emotional attachments of the child within the family group. London children therefore were on the whole much less upset by bombing than by evacuation to the country as a protection against it.”
Something to think about, as our country breaks up family life by design and then imposes a fate on children that is apparently worse than the Blitz. This is certainly not our finest hour.
London children … were on the whole much less upset by bombing than by evacuation to the country as a protection against it.