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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Unwanted Child Lives in Aqony totally strange environment, where she was by the very nature of things unimportant and superfluous, subjected to constant contrast with .a more attractive and beloved child, one can only congratulate her upon this opportunity to escape from as selfish and callous a household house-hold as it has ever been my experience exper-ience to meet. Infinite harm has probably already al-ready been done this child's spirit. But since she is gentle and shy, she is perhaps not hardened as yet and may bloom like a little flower when she gets into the sunlight. sun-light. As for you and her father, well, you didn't ask me for a lecture on parental morality and responsibility, responsi-bility, not to mention common decency de-cency and humanity. But I marvel that so many intelligent men and women more often than men, can assure themselves fatuously that by uprooting one domestic set-up they are qualified blandly to begin be-gin to build up another. You take your Ann away from her father, lightly assume the care of another small girl, this one motherless, and are confident that you are a fit person to bring other children into the world. . ' Bell Syndicate WNU Features rjESPITE THE FACT that David and I are deeply in love with each other," writes Janet Harrison from Toledo, "ours is a disturbed and unhappy un-happy home, and I am writing to ask your help in solving what has become a real problem. "Two years ago, at 26, I married my office boss. I had been divorced, and have one child, Ann, who is 5. David also secured a divorce and also has a daughter, Pamela, who is 8. Pamela's mother has already al-ready married again and gone away, not even sending the child a card at Christmas. "My first husband and his people peo-ple are devoted to Ann, who goes to them for a week end twice a month, returning loaded with presents pres-ents and stories of good times. Under the circumstances I can hardly ask them to include Pamela Pam-ela in these affairs, and as David often takes me on short business trips, we leave his daughter with my old Mammy here at home. But this is hard on Mammy, who has family and church interests of her own. Sensitive Little Thing "Naturally, David loves his own child deeply, and so do I. But she is a shy, sensitive little thing, and has made only one friend, a crippled crip-pled boy of 10 in the adjoining apartment, whose parents are about to move back to their Philadelphia Phila-delphia home. "This is the problem.. They adore Pamela, and she is quite as devoted de-voted to them. Bob, the son, never will walk and they tell me he has never found so congenial a companion com-panion as Pam. They want to adopt her. On investigation I have . . a congenial companion . . . learned that they are fine people, have a big house, a boat, and so on. "They don't want half measures. It must be full adoption or nothing. Pamela's mother, to whom I wrote, agrees to the plan and David is influenced by the fact that with the atmosphere here so much eased I would be glad to have another child or two, a responsibility I am certainly not willing to face as things are now. "Knowing that you advise many other younger couples as to marital mari-tal problems, we come to you with the confidence that whatever you say will be actuated by a desire to do the best for all parties. And that is all David and I want" Give Up Pamela Since you ask me, Janet, my advice ad-vice would be to surrender Pamela completely to the care of this family fam-ily that has apparently discovered the real child under the confusion and dismay that must so often have flooded her little heart. Betrayed by her mother, precipitated into a |
