INDEX OF QUOTES
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Looking through child service students’ reports of their visits to ‘problem’ families, I have noticed how often the parents, in referring to their families of origin, have described themselves as ‘the black sheep of the family’. The phrase has been used in several ways — as a contrast to more successful siblings who now have good jobs, pleasant homes and fewer children, or as an excuse for deteriorated or severed relations with their family, or as a description of the manner in which they felt themselves treated when they were children. But whatever the context there always seem to be undertones leading back to certain feelings in their own childhood — a sense of isolation and not belonging, of inadequacy and dejection. The black sheep is very dirty and bad, and the flock, though possibly of varying hues, is so much whiter and better. Retrospective studies of personal history may, of course, be misleading, though the frequency of such feelings about childhood is interesting. |
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