Individuality Worry With Quintuplets

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 2

Individuality Worry With Quintuplets

Careful psychiatric studies had shown that twins had difficulties in establishing their separate identities and had other psychological problems, which would, she felt, be multiplied in quintuplets, said Dr. Katharine Goddard, a visiting American pediatrician, in Christchurch yesterday.

“Quins were born in the United States last year and I hoped a psychological study would be made on them, but as far as I know nothing has yet been done,” she said.

The mother of a married daughter and a younger son, Dr. Goddard sees no advantage in having quintuplets. “L personally, think it would be too difficult to raise five children of the same age,” she said. The new hormone treatment, which allows infertile women to have children but at some risk of multiple births, she described as a fascinating medical discovery. “I am tremendously interested in it but I don’t know anything about it and I’ll await findings published about it in medical journals, to really understand some of the physiological effects of the drug,” she said. Peri-natal Mortality The greatest concern in American pediatrics at the present time was the attempt to cut out peri-natal mortality, which includes congenital defects, premature births, still births and diseases that occur in the immediate nursery period, she said. A great deal of money was being spent in the United States on mental retardation studies, stimulated by the interest of the Kennedy family who have established the Kennedy Foundation for this work. Research Grants Grants had been awarded from the foundation to many universities and pediatric institutions for study of the causes and management of

the problems of the retarded. Now that poliomyelitis was under control, the Polio Foundation had also made big contributions to the study of congenital difficulties. “With the availability of these funds, considerable research is being done,” she said.

Dr. Goddard, who is studying child psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania

where her husband (Dr. David Goddard) is the provost, worked for a time in a school for mentally retarded children. As a pediatrician she has been in a group practice in Philadelphia and was director of pediatrics outpatient department at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. N.Z. Child Care “I am very interested to see what Australia and New Zealand are doing in the field of child care,” she said. Doing all her own cooking, running her home and studying gives Dr. Goddard a fulltime programme through the year. “So I really enjoy our family holiday together in the summer,” she said. . “We have done some wonderful camping trips. We have driven across the United States several times and have been up into the Rocky Mountains. “This visit to New Zealand is a real privilege and we greatly appreciate all that has been done for us." Dr. David and Dr. Katharine Goddard have brought their son with them as a “last fling” before he enters university to do a liberal arts