Togetherness in Disaster

When ships go down, the cry goes up: "Women and children first!" Now two reputable psychiatrists have decided that the age-old rule of the sea, aimed at helping those least able to help themselves, should be thrown overboard.

They base their conclusion on experience. Dr. Paul Friedman of Manhattan's Beth Israel Hospital and Dr. Louis Linn of Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital were aboard the lie de France on the night of July 25, 1956, when the Stockholm collided with the Andrea Doria. As several hundred survivors were brought onto the lie, the psychiatrists spoke to them and noted their psychological condition. Reporting their findings last week in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Drs. Friedman and Linn noted that the "women and children first" principle brought "some poignant and . . . tragic separations," added that the "principle frequently results in the isolation of children from their parents with possibly disastrous psychological consequences."

The psychiatrists pointed out that during the war children often survived the most unnerving experiences psychologically intact so long as a parent was with them, but quickly collapsed when alone, the experiences becoming "enormously important the moment they break up family life." Concluded the psychiatrists: the "women and children first" rule should be modified "by insistence that a parent accompany the child, even if the only parent available be the father."

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