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<title> The Fifth Child, could've happened to anybody? </title>
At first when I read Lessings book, I found it very difficult to find a meaningful theme, but after having read some background on the 70s, and 80s the time in which the book was written, has helped me see its relevance, especially for its time. The social and political times of the seventies changed the role of the family, not in the least women. Women were experiencing opportunities that hadn't been available to them earlier. Contraceptives were just one of the issues for the times, along with sexual awareness. The role of women was no longer as clear as before. Then as the seventies progressed into the 80s, Britian experienced high unemployment and economical recession and a change from the Labour party majority to Thatherism, resulting in a more conservative government. The rise of crime, high unemployment, and social unrest, caused many people to go back to a more traditional lifestyle and I tend to believe that the book was reflecting on that transition. Lessing wanted to show that whether you come from a happy, warm, nurturing family, or from an unhappy family you still can't choose what type of child you will have. Whether or not you choose to go back to a more traditional lifestyle, which many people did in the 80s, problems can arise even if you try and build a wall between your family and the outside world, such as The Lovatts. 

Lessing gives the role of non-religious traditionalist to the Lovatts who seem themselves as protectors and their house as a fortress, "...their kingdom, in which three precious children were nurtured, and where so many people came to immerse themselves in safety, comfort, kindness..."
At this time the traditional family structure is being questioned in parallel to the struggle for women's rights. The Lovatts see themselves as going against their peers of the seventies and instead choose an old-fashioner lifestyle. The seventies engrossed many changes for society, both political and social, high unemployment, the increasing rights of women, and the availability of illegal drugs. 

Perhaps Lessing was attempting to reach the disillusioned majority of people that had attempted the modern lifestyle of the 60s and 70s and now were looking back on that time as something else. She writes about the misfortune outside of the Lovatts happy home: "...The house next doors had been burgled three times: the Lovatts' not yet, but then there were always people about..., and Harriet states in regards to her sister Sarah: "...The easy good times had utterly gone..." and that ...she (Sarah) and William attracted all the ill luck..." Then she brings up fatalism, that somehow you get what you deserve, with Harriet concluding that the cause of "...Sarah and William's unhappiness, their quarrelling, was what had attracted their Down syndrome baby..." Such views were, and still are, unconsciously accepted by many people.

One of the traits of an old-fashioned family is the woman's role in it. A woman is always happy during her pregnancy and is not expected to complain. Lessing describes Harriets fifth pregnancy in the following passage: "...Time passed. It did pass, though she was held in an order of time different from those around her- and not the pregnant woman's time either, which is slow, a calendar of the growth of the hidden being." Here she states two ideas of the traditionlist, one that Harriet is not like all the other wonderful, happy pregnant women out there, but an exception. Secondly, that this is a sign for the problems to come. Lessing goes on to write about when Ben was born that he shows no signs of humanness. As the book progresses Harriet reflects on Ben's unfeeling behaviour; "...Those cold, inhuman eyes - people assumed he saw what they did, that he saw a human world..." Is Lessing saying her that Ben does not possess humanity?

By the end of the book the happy family's deterioration is complete with all the four other children choosing to live with someone other than their own parents. Harriet is left alone to deal with Ben and subconsciously takes responsibility for the break down of the family. Lessing tries to make her reader aware of an age-old trait, which appears in any happy or unhappy home when things go wrong, is that it's often the mother who takes the blame. Lessing comprises in a paragraph the complexity and confusion of the times: (Harriet's thoughts) "...Who had not let Ben be murdered, she defended herself fiercely, in thought, never aloud. By everything they-the society she belonged to-stood for, believed in, she had had no alternative but to bring Ben back from that place. But because she had, and saved him from murder, she had destroyed her family. Had harmed her life...David's...Luke's, Helen's, Jane's...and Paul's. Paul, the worst..."
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