Child Cries Research Articles

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Teratologies: A cultural study of cancer. By Jackie StaceyThe cry of mute children: A psychoanalytic perspective of the second generation of the holocaust. By Ilany Kogan.

‘Imitating the Cries of Little Children’

IN 1832 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, a fervent supporter of the recent Reform Act in Britain, contested the new borough of Leeds for the Whigs. His Tory opponent was Michael Thomas Sadler, England's most prominent advocate of a factory act that would limit the hours and conditions of work for children. The few Leeds workingmen enfranchised by the Reform Act supported Sadler who had opposed the Reform Act. So did William Cobbett whose memorable laments for the passing of rural England and vigorous denunciations of the 'Satanic mills' inspired future generations of English radicals. Macaulay had no patience with such antique arguments in the new age: 'As I am for freedom of discussion and worship, so I am also for freedom of trade. I am for a system under which we may sell where we can sell dearest and buy where we can buy cheapest.' When challenged at a public debate on the effects of free trade on children, Macaulay declared that if 'the labouring classes expect any great relief from any [factory act] they are under a great delusion.' Macaulay won the election principally because of strong support from the newly enfranchised bourgeoisie. In that election, his biographer writes, 'his belief in the saving power of free trade won out over any solicitude he may have felt for the plight of the working class in Leeds.'(f.1) Or, for that matter, the plight of their children.Professor of History, University of Waterloo, and chair of the House of Commons Subcommittee on Sustainable Human Development.I would like to thank several people who helped me to understand these issues. Gerry Schmitz. the outstanding researcher for the Library of Parliament, was of enormous assistance. Gordon Shields, my assistant, understood the issue well and was indefatigable in working on the report. Christine Fisher, Landon Pearson, and my committee colleagues. Maud Debien, Keith Martin, John Godfrey, Beryl Gaffney. and Eleni Bakopanos, were helpful. thoughtful, and generous with their time.During the campaign Macaulay denounced Sadler as a 'hyena,' a wild beast who would lure the unwary into its den through its 'singular knack of imitating the cries of little children.' Macaulay knew well the effect of the 'cries of little children' for his father was Zachary Macaulay, the great evangelical anti-slavery leader. The British abolitionist movement had used most effectively the cries of little children to undermine support for free trade in humans, but Zachary Macaulay's son had long ago abandoned his early evangelical principles in favour of the political and economic liberalism which held sway in Victorian Britain. That liberalism, he believed, was responsible for the 'beautiful factories' and the 'magnificent' cities of nineteenth century Britain. Those who reminded him of the 'cries of little children' longed for an imagined past and ignored the promise of the revolution of his times.(f.2)Those cries bother Macaulay's heirs today as they celebrate the remarkable victories of economic and political liberalism over the last fifteen years. Macaulay feared, probably correctly, that restricting the hours of work for children would lead to limiting the hours for adult workers. Where would it all end, he asked - likely with British textile workers unemployed, their children poorer, and the British buying cheaper clothes from lands where wages were lower. There were, he urged, no easy solutions, but surely 'judicious legislation promoting trade' would ultimately prove the best choice. His arguments find their modern echoes in G-7 and international development bank conferences, in the business pages of the Globe and Mail, in editorials in the Economist, and in James Cooper's article in this journal. Sadler, however, finds contemporary echoes too, modern 'hyenas' imitating the cries of children in unlit, unventilated 'Satanic mills' in Pakistan, India, and Central America.When Prime Minister Jean Chretien took Team Canada to south Asia in January 1996, Craig Keilburger, a 13-year-old activist, captured as much time as the prime minister on CNN and Canadian television as he excoriated the Indian government for its tolerance of exploitative child labour. …

On the Fifth Stasimon of Euripides' Medea

Among the lyrics of extant Greek tragedy several passages of Euripides are remarkable for the effects of pathos achieved by introducing children. In Alcestis the children of the protagonists appear unexpectedly on the stage and sing a strophic lament over their dead mother, punctuated by two trimeters of Admetus sharing their grief (392-415). Suppliants presents an even longer and more complex choral lament as Euadne's now orphaned children join with the chorus in a commatic, antiphonal threnos for their mother (1123-64).1 Their appearance not only adds to the sudden flurry of new characters when the play is already nearing its end (Euadne enters at 990 and her father Iphis at 1034) but also fills out the panorama of lament at the end of the play: children and a father lament over a mother and a daughter who chose a heroic death, and the Argive children, thanks to Theseus, can lament over the bodies of their slain warrior fathers (Supp. 1114-75). The parallelism helps emphasize the heroism of Euadne, one of several self-sacrificing women in these so-called political plays. Euripides obtains another kind of pathos by the offstage cries of Medea's children at the moment of their murder. In an initial strophe and antistrophe the chorus of Corinthian women expresses its horror at the imminent slaughter and speculates on its supernatural causes (an Erinys in the house, 1258-60) and also on its human motivations (Me-

Neuronal networks and self-organizing maps: new computer techniques in the acoustic evaluation of the infant cry

Neuronal networks are computer-based techniques for the evaluation and control of complex information systems and processes. So far, they have been used in engineering, telecommunications, artificial speech and speech recognition. A new approach in neuronal network is the self-organizing map (Kohonen map). In the phase of ‘learning’, the map adapts to the patterns of the primary signals. If, in the phase of ‘using the map’, the input signal hits the field of the primary signals, it resembles them and is called a ‘winner’. In our study, we recorded the cries of newborns and young infants using digital audio tape (DAT) and a high quality microphone. The cries were elicited by tactile stimuli wearing headphones. In 27 cases, delayed auditory feedback was presented to the children using a headphone and an additional three-head tape-recorder. Spectrographic characteristics of the cries were classified by 20-step bark spectra and then applied to the neuronal networks. It was possible to recognize similarities of different cries of the same children as well as interindividual differences, which are also audible to experienced listeners. Differences were obvious in profound hearing loss. We know much about the cries of both healthy and sick infants, but a reliable investigation regimen, which can be used for clinical routine purposes, has yet not been developed. If, in the future, it becomes possible to classify spectrographic characteristics automatically, even if they are not audible, neuronal networks may be helpful in the early diagnosis of infant diseases.

Richard C. Lukas. <italic>Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939–1945</italic>. New York: Hippocrene. 1994. Pp. 263. $24.95

Journal Article Richard C. Lukas. Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939–1945. New York: Hippocrene. 1994. Pp. 263. $24.95 Get access Lukas Richard C.. Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939–1945. New York: Hippocrene. 1994. Pp. 263. $24.95. Karl A. Schleunes Karl A. Schleunes University of North Carolina, Greensboro Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 101, Issue 2, April 1996, Page 520, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/101.2.520 Published: 01 April 1996

Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945.

Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945.

Finding relations between input and outcome in language acquisition.

J. N, Bohannon, R. J. Padgett, K. E. Nelson, and M. Mark (1996) raised numerous points of disagreement with the analyses of J. L. Morgan, K. Bonamo, and L. L. Travis (1995) concerning children's use of parental recasts, responses potentially providing negative evidence. Claiming to show that the bivariate time-series analyses used by Morgan et al. were inherently flawed, Bohannon et al. argued that training studies offer a preferable means for examining contributions of language input. In this article, multiple weaknesses of training studies are noted; at best, such studies may yield information on the sufficiency of aspects of language input but can yield none on their necessity. The failure of Bohannon et al.'s time-series analyses to distinguish among varying models of recast function is shown to be attributable to confounding of parameters and idiosyncratic assumptions adopted in generating simulated data from these models. Contrary to Bohannon et al.'s assertions, bivariate time-series analyses of observational data may provide invaluable tools for discerning signs and magnitudes of relations among variables in language development. A child cries out at birth and would doubtless in any case after a time take to gurgling and babbling, but the particular language he learns is entirely a matter of environment. . . . The child learns to speak like the persons round him. (Bloomfield, 1933, p. 43)

Child killing by parents: A motivational model

Child Abuse ReviewVolume 4, Issue 5 p. 365-370 Brief CommunicationFree Access Child killing by parents: a motivational model Ania Wilczynski, Corresponding Author Ania Wilczynski Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, Phillip Street, Sydney NSW 2000, AustraliaFaculty of Law, University of Sydney, Phillip Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia.Search for more papers by this author Ania Wilczynski, Corresponding Author Ania Wilczynski Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, Phillip Street, Sydney NSW 2000, AustraliaFaculty of Law, University of Sydney, Phillip Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia.Search for more papers by this author First published: December 1995 https://doi.org/10.1002/car.189Citations: 24AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat References Baker, J.M. (1991). ‘You Can't Let Your Children Cry’: Filicide in Victoria 1978–1988. MA thesis, University of Melbourne, Australia. d'Orban, P.T. (1979). Women who kill their children. British Journal of Psychiatry, 134, 560– 71. Daly, M. and Wilson M. (1988). Homicide. Aldine De Gruyter, New York. Greenland, C. (1987). Preventing CAN Deaths. Tavistock, London. Harder, T. (1967). The psychopathology of infanticide. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 43(196), 196– 245. Resnick, P.J. (1969). Child murder by parents: a psychiatric review of filicide. American Journal of Psychiatry, 126, 73– 82. Rosenberg, D.A. (1987). Web of deceit: a literature review of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Child Abuse and Neglect, 11, 547– 563. Scott, P.D. (1973). Parents who kill their children. Medicine, Science and the Law, 13(2), 120– 125. Simpson, A.I.F. (1992). Maternal filicide: an approach to classification and understanding. In Progress in Forensic Psychiatry (Conference Proceedings), Auckland, New Zealand. Steele, B.F. (1978). Psychology of infanticide resulting from maltreatment. In M. Kohl (Ed.), Infanticide and the Value of Life, Prometheus, New York, pp. 76– 85. Wallace, A. (1986). Homicide. NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Sydney, Australia. Wilczynski, A. (1993). A socio-legal study of parents who kill their children in England and Wales. Criminology PhD thesis, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. Citing Literature Volume4, Issue5Special Issue: FREE ACCESS ISSUE on Fatal Child AbuseDecember 1995Pages 365-370 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Computerized cry analysis in infants affected by severe protein energy malnutrition.

A new method of computerized cry analysis has been utilized to evaluate the cries of infants affected by severe protein energy malnutrition. We studied 17 Kenian babies affected by severe malnutrition for more than four months (9 cases of marasmus and 8 of kwashiorkor) and a control group of 17 well-nourished babies. The cries of the malnourished children showed lower inter-utterance variability, formants' frequencies and cry score, assigned by the Infant Cry Modulation Assessment Scale. The melodic pattern was more often flat, rising or falling-rising, when compared to the cries of the well-nourished babies. We hypothesize that these differences reflect the state of brain damage associated with protein energy malnutrition. No differences were found between the cries of infants affected by marasmus and those affected by kwashiorkor, between the cries recorded before and after nutritional therapy and between the first cries of malnourished children who subsequently died during hospitalization and those of infants who survived.

Weird Wet Snapping Sounds: The Rhythms of Radio Drama

Some years ago, CBC Radio’s Morningside presented a sound puzzle to its audience. The tape played was a montage of noises and music without narration or dialogue. Listeners were challenged to identify the story being related by the collection of sounds. The tape begins with music and ends with waves washing up on a beach, after a sequence of sound effects, some eminently recognizable – a child crying, a dog barking – and some more mysterious – a clanking sound, an explosion of some sort. Even the familiar sounds are hard to contextualize: yes, that’s applause, but who is applauding and for what reason? A series of sounds seems clearly related to growing up: a woman gives birth, a boy plays with a dog, wedding bells ring. Another child cries. When the piece was played again with narration, the story assumed one simple shape: an astronaut in a shuttle recalls his life in the moments before the final blow-up. The Challenger disaster.

Adult-child interaction during invasive medical procedures.

Adult-child interactions during stressful medical procedures were investigated in 43 pediatric patients videotaped during a venipuncture procedure in the course of cancer treatment. Relations among six adult behavior categories (explain, distract, command to engage in coping behavior, give control to the child, praise, and criticize/threat/bargain) and three child behavior categories (momentary distress, cry/scream, and cope) were examined using correlational and sequential analysis. Results indicated that adult distraction resulted in increased child coping and reduced momentary distress and crying. Adult explanations, although a likely response to child distress and crying, did not result in a reduction of these behaviors. Attempts to give the child control reduced child crying. Implications for clinical interventions during painful medical procedures are discussed.

Arnold's sea of faithlessness: Margaret, the merman, and the cry of the children

Arnold's sea of faithlessness: Margaret, the merman, and the cry of the children

Coconuts and conduct disorder

A large crowd throngs the out-patient hall and all 300 children cry in unison. The father of an eight year-old girl pushes her through the crowd until she reaches a partitioned cubicle where four doctors sit round a table. He puts her in front of the first doctor and tells him about the chest pain she has had for months. The doctor, struggling to hear above the din, takes a brief history and examines the girl standing up. The history is inconclusive and there are no signs; he cannot understand why her parents have bothered to make the 30 mile bus ride that morning; why didn't they accept the advice of the paediatricians they had consulted nearer their home? Usually he would have written a prescription for a tonic costing the father two days' wages, but this time he directs the girl and her father back through the crowd to where I sit, alone in my cubicle, separated from the gaze of the attenders by a saloon bar door.

Behavioral Treatment of Multiple Childhood Sleep Disorders

Sleep disorders are highly prevalent among otherwise healthy young children and can be extremely disruptive to family life. Treatment was initiated in a multiple baseline fashion for the chronic night waking and nighttime disturbance exhibited by a 14-month-old girl. We found that "graduated extinction" (gradually increasing the time before attending to the child's crying) resulted in rapid reductions in these sleep disorders. Additionally, data on parental depression and marital satisfaction showed general improvement as a function of improved child sleep patterns. These results are discussed as they relate to the treatment of common childhood behavior disorders and their role in family satisfaction.

Employee loyalty is an attainable goal.

Let's start with a subject we're all committed to—our children. When my child was very young, my wife and I learned, as do most parents, that there are several approaches to dealing with crying at night. First, you can let a child cry. After all, life is full of ups and downs and terrors of the night. In the business world, we call them by other names—downsizing, layoffs, career plateaus, political hot soup. But kids will have to learn how to deal with them. You can't expect sympathy later, so why expect it now?

Effects of infant cries on alcohol consumption in college males at risk for child abuse

This analog study examines the effect of hearing a child's cries on alcohol consumption, comprising one link in a possible association between drinking and child abuse. Thirty-two male undergraduate volunteers were preselected by age, drinking practices, and abuse potential. Subjects were assigned to either a high or low abuse potential group and were then randomly assigned to hear either an infant cry or a smoke alarm. Blood pressure was measured during each of three stimulus presentations. Following each presentation, the subject was asked to rate the stimulus on a number of different dimensions (e.g., soothing-arousing). Additionally all subjects participated in a subsequent taste-rating task as an unobtrusive measure of alcohol consumption. The results indicate that, regardless of risk group, subjects who listened to the infant cry consumed significantly more alcohol ( M = 206 ml, SD = 126.43) during the taste-rating task than did those who heard only the smoke alarm ( M = 95.68 ml, SD = 62.94) which was also rated as aversive. There was no relationship between abuse potential and alcohol consumption. Although diastolic blood pressure did not differ between groups, analysis of the infant rating scales revealed that, regardless of risk group, subjects who heard the infant cry reported feeling more aversion, arousal, and distress, than did those who heard the smoke alarm. These results lend additional support to studies depicting the infant cry as a stressful and aversive event, capable of eliciting increased drinking. Implications for arousal reduction by alcohol and a model of alcohol-induced child abuse are discussed.

The Constant State of Desire

She dreams. She dreams of falling out of a fifth-story window. But she catches her fall by holding on to the window ledge. It's January and the ledge is made of stone and icy cold. The stone, the ice, the cold cuts through her flesh, her fingers, her bone. It doesn't matter though, for she has ugly fingers. And she sees the blood gush out of her limbs, the harder she holds on to the ledge. She can hear her own death. And her husband walks below as she hangs out of the building. But her husband hadn't memorized her shadow and she didn't know how to wear perfume. She wasn't that kind of a girl. So she calls out for help. Help. Heelp. Heellllp. But the wind was in a mean mood and took her cries half way round the world to a child's crib, so its mother could hear her own child's cries.

Book Review: ‘If a Child Cries …’: Collected Papers of John Apley

Book Review: ‘If a Child Cries …’: Collected Papers of John Apley

“Let Us Breathe”’

Following the murder of George Floyd, thousands took to the streets around the world to force the conversation on race injustice, many including children seizing the opportunity to call for change.All over the world, mamas of all colours were hearing the cries of children marching the streets saying let us breathe. Many professional groups posted position statements on anti-racism. The Association of Educational Psychologists (a professional union) quickly posted Racism has no place in our Society. One discussion thread on a professional forum (EPnet) was started by a colleague and was largely met with silence. Attempts to ignite conversation about racism, inequity and justice within the profession fell on deaf ears. I wrote two letters to the Educational Psychology Group sharing my experiences of the Profession and calling for change. The letters received a wide response from educational psychologists in the UK and one colleague wrote Shungu, your post is the most important email I can ever recall reading on Epnet. It is a challenge to the establishment and a call to arms for us liberal whites who think we don't need to engage in the continuous process of confronting and coming to terms with our complicity in white supremacy. And I don't mean right wing extremism here. Being silent is not good enough. These letters the subject of this presentation explore the issues I put to the Educational Psychology Group. The issues fall within the area of Managing difficult conversations to foster professional resilience and mental health. It is hoped that sharing of these letters and discussions will encourage a broader discussion of racism, inequity and justice in the professions of psychology and psychiatry. It is only in the having of these conversations that our professions and society can truly achieve meaningful and measurable change.

THE APPALLING INDUSTRIAL HAZARDS TO WHICH AMERICAN WORKING CHILDREN WERE EXPOSED IN 1900

In 1900 one-third of the workers in our Southern mills were children. For the United States at large about twenty percent of all children between 10 to 15 years of age were employed as full-time factory workers. At the turn of the century child labor was a practice encouraged by industry, agreed to by parents, and generally ignored by government. To call attention to the evils of child labor, John Spargo, an American reformer and author, published his impassioned book entitled, The Bitter Cry of Children, in 1906. In it he wrote: It is a sorry but indisputable fact that where children are employed, the most unheathful work is generally given them. In the spinning and carding rooms of cotton and woollen mills, where large numbers of children are employed, clouds of lint-dust fill the lungs and menace the health. The children have often a distressing cough, caused by the irritation of the throat, and many are hoarse from the same cause. In bottle factories and other branches of glass manufacture, the atmosphere is constantly charged with microscopic particles of glass. In the wood working industries, such as the manufacture of cheap furniture and wooden boxes, and packing cases, the air is laden with fine sawdust. Children employed in soap and soap-powder factories work, many of them, in clouds of alkaline dust which inflames the eyelids and nostrils. Boys employed in filling boxes of soap-powder work all day long with handkerchiefs tied over their mouths. In the coal-mines the breaker boys breathe air that is heavy and thick with particles of coal, and their lungs become black in consequence.