View report page

91
Enquiry into Rate of Growth (weight) of Woolwich Infants
born in 1921. In the routine work of infant welfare
centres a large amount of material is accumulated year by
year, and this should be placed on record so that it can be
available for statisticians or other persons interested who can
make full use of it. If one considers such an every-day subject
as the rate of change which takes place week by week
in the weight of a baby, great difficulty will be found in
obtaining the authority on which the usual published weight
chart is based. Observations of weight have been made in
various countries by different observers at different times,
and by different methods, but when the results are compared
it is found that considerable differences exist at the various
age periods. The usual weight chart, as published, is for
both sexes, whereas, as is well known, growth is different in
boys and girls, the boys developing much more rapidly from
the start.
Every day, in our welfare centres, babies are weighed.
These weights are recorded and are useful to shew the progress
of an individual baby from week to week. In the mass,
little attempt has been made to formulate the rate of growth
in particular localities, although it is now generally believed
that it is unsound to use a standard weight chart for the whole
of Great Britain and that separate charts should be constructed
for each locality. Babies vary in size and rate of
growth in different areas and a standard chart is apt to be
misleading, being too flattering or disappointing, as the case
may be, to intelligent mothers. It was considered desirable
to make an investigation on these lines in Woolwich and
during the last twelve months such an invesitgation has
been carried out, the idea underlying the enquiry being to
find the weight of the average Woolwich infant at each
week in the first year of its life.