172 Heredity and Child Culture 



likewise abandoned the institutional plan and 

 placed all destitute children in family homes. 



It is the infant that suffers most from 

 institutional care. Babies are brought into: 

 the world singly and not in droves, and they 

 crave individual care and mothering. The 

 little child craves love. That close human ob- 

 server, Jane Addams, with sympathetic vision, 

 puts it thus : — ''We are told that the will to live 

 is aroused in each baby by his mother 's irresist- 

 ible desire to play with him, the physiological 

 value of joy that a child is born, and that the 

 high death rate in institutions is increased by 

 the discontented babies whom no one persuades 

 into living." 



In the last report of the State Board of Char- 

 ities of New York, it is stated that 57.2 per cent, 

 of infants under one year died in infant asylums 

 through the state. There have been similar 

 results as long as records have been kept. 

 Under three months, the mortality often reaches 

 two-thirds of the cases admitted. Some years 

 ago the American Child Hygiene Association 

 reported that during a series of years, the 



