Importance Of Meeting Children's Deficiency Needs

In the past, I believe that children around the world were not obtaining the care they deserved and that this would lead to negative outcomes in the children’s futures. However, many individuals did not know what care was actually necessary for children to thrive. In 1968, Abraham Maslow first introduced the importance of deficiency needs. These deficiency needs included safety and security, love and belongingness, and self-esteem. According to Maslow’s Theory, Maslow believed that every human being must have basic deficiency needs, at least minimally met, in order to adequately develop and to be able to address the growth needs. Although individuals now knew exactly what children needed to thrive, meeting deficiency needs was not an easy task, …show more content…
First of all, individuals knew that children needed to be taken care of in order to adequately develop, but some did not know to what extent until Abraham Maslow introduced them in 1968. Therefore, it is a little easier to not judge families so harshly for how children were treated in the past. Going back in time, the families who worked on farms often would have a lot of children because they needed help working and knew that most of them would not survive due to the fact that there were no vaccines for illnesses and other reasons such as lack of health care and harsh living conditions. These children were forced to wake up at early hours so that they could work all day long in the unbearable heat or bitter cold. It is a pretty easy to assume that these children did not feel loved or safe and have any self-esteem because there were so many children, harsh working conditions, and no time to focus on oneself. Later, when factories emerged, children were sent to work in very dangerous environments. Therefore, deficiency needs were still not being met because these children clearly did not fell loved or safe. Perhaps, in the past, children’s deficiency needs were not being met unless they were from a wealthy family. Wealthy families did not have their children working on farms or in factories and they had the financial means to support their children, yet I’m not saying that every wealthy family made sure their children’s deficiency needs were met. Families living in poverty just had a harder time supporting their children and “approximately 5 percent of all children live in poverty for more than 10 year” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). After seeing how important meeting deficiency needs is in children, I am greatly saddened by the fact that children were treated so