THE NEEDS OF CHILDREN

From the UK and commissioned by their Department of Health and Social Security as the first in an interdisciplinary series on human development, a summary of children's psychosocial needs with emphasis on the ""disastrous"" consequences of failure to meet them. Pringle stresses that lower-class children have far less chance than middle-class ones for satisfaction of basic needs (love and security, praise and recognition, new experience, and responsibility), and she designates certain children--the handicapped, those from large low-income families, minority groups and one-parent homes--as ""vulnerable"" or ""at risk."" As for whether such children should be singled out for preventive attention (in the manner, say, of the Gluecks' controversial pre-delinquency label), Pringle here as elsewhere avoids taking sides. Rather this seems a sort of background report to non-specialists in a position to influence policy, with the harder questions--how best to supplement home care, compensate for its inadequacies and break the ""cycle of deprivation""--merely listed at the end as areas for further investigation. Preliminary.