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<title> The fifth child </title>
The main theme in The fifth child, as I see it, is the high expectations and unrealistic dreams of a perfect family in a perfect home, that makes people forget that they are human. In setting up a goal in life like David and Harriet did, one must not forget that that is just something to keep you going and struggling for, not something which is necessarily the only possibility nor the best one. This is especially important when it comes to the issue of this novel, namely family and children. By setting the level of success at the highest point, the perfect family and life, they push themselves to the limit where nothing else is accepted. Different is bad and thereby alienated (and this is something that parents pass on to their children). We can see this quite clearly on page 29 where Harriet is telling David that her sister Sarah's child Amy, who has Down's syndrome, was probably brought on by the fact that her sister and her husband William was unhappy and always quarrelled a lot. A child who is different from what you would call normal is not seen by Harriet as a blessing, but a punishment. When strange, little Ben comes along David and Harriet are however faced with the same thing. But instead of accepting the fact that perhaps they are just unhappy or unsatisfied with their lives at this time, they blame everything on Ben and try to send the "problem" away. I think that the problem is not Ben, but something else connected to the high expectations and dreams of David and Harriet. Their lives, at the point where Ben comes along, are not what they had dreamed or hoped for, and maybe they want Ben to be the problem because that would be easier than dealing with their lives. 
	 First of all there is the house, by the size of a hotel, which the happy couple, Harriet and David, can not really afford. Because they can not afford it, David is forced to ask his rich father James for financial support. David does, however, want to be able to pay for it by himself (since Harriet is at home with their perfect children) and when David's firm is struck and he is not given his promotion, which we are told about on page 29, he takes on more jobs. This, and the fact that he has gone against his principles by asking for help, tears him down piece by piece, and when Ben is born David is practically a zombie. Harriet is worn out by the first four pregnancies (in just seven years), her tummy is sore and her back hurts. It has not even been a year since her last baby was born and suddenly she is forced to put her body through another pregnancy. With a strain like that, her tummy already sore from her last pregnancy, and this baby being so lively, it is perhaps hard to be happy about another child. 
	 There is also the fact that David and Harriet has always been seen as outsiders with their old fashioned and conservative beliefs. They have different values from most other people living in the sixties, who believe in the sexual revolution and so on, whereby the couple mostly live in their own world, their big safe house, isolated from other people. This makes them depend on their family to function normally without disruption, and when Ben is born he disturbs the balance, and most, if not to say all, of the relatives turn their backs on David and Harriet. The perfect holidays of loving hospitality at the Lovatt's, which we read about on page 30 and which are of great importance for David and Harriet, are suddenly gone. In addition to this the neighbourhood, in the small town where they are living, is getting more dangerous, with burglaries, robberies, and other violent crimes becoming common nature.
	 Could it be that there is just no room in these loving parents' hearts for one more person to care about? Harriet needs to take care of herself and rest, even the doctor says so, and David is hardly ever off from work. I do not think Ben is an evil child, who does not want to cuddle and likes hurting other people or animals. He is just born at the wrong time where their is little time or love to give to a small baby. He probably needs to feel that someone wants to cuddle with him before he is ready to accept that it is nice, and I do not see Harriet nor David trying so hard to teach him that. It is more like they find it a relief not to have to touch him. If Ben had been given some time and effort I am sure he would not be so different from the other children in ways of playing and behaving. But he is treated different from the start, even during the pregnancy, and the fact that poor Ben looks different and has a hard time learning things, in a family where "perfect" is the goal, really leaves him on his own. Not the perfect conditions for learning about love and compassion, which is what is different about Ben from the beginning. The high expectations that David and Harriet set up for themselves destroyed their family, not Ben.
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