fants, though not parentless, were rendered homeless. They
had to be collected in residential nurseries and there suffered
the experience of "life without the family" which is, in
peace-time, reserved for the inhabitants of orphanages.
The effect, not merely of the shock of bring separated from
the family, but of the lack of continuous emotional contact
between the infant and his parents with the consequent
absence of the specific formative influence inherent in the
family tie, was thus open to view in many more cases than
usual and seemed to us worthy of study and description.

It is not at present possible to predict how many of the
children, now in residential nurseries, will be found to be
permanently homeless when the war is ended. A preliminary
survey of our own children's circumstances has shown that,
present conditions remaining unaltered, 59 per cent could
return to their families as soon as their fathers are demobil-
ized and their mothers stop war-work. 41 per cent would
remain homeless for various reasons: because they are
illegitimate and their mothers, as unskilled or domestic
workers, unable to maintain a home; because their families
are destitute and either morally or financially unable to take
care of them; because their mothers have lost touch with
them during the war and cannot be traced; because their
mothers are ill, either in tuberculosis hospitals or in mental
homes; because their mothers have died during the war so
that a return home depends on eventual re-marriage of the
father; because they have lost both parents in the raids.

Possibly this percentage of homeless children is consider-
ably higher in the Hampstead Nursery where this investiga-
tion was carried out than in the official residential nurseries.
It is possible, too, that post-war efforts will be directed
towards dealing with homelessness without the help of resi-

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