Sometimes the failure to understand what the children are doing brings unnecessary worry. A Hungarian mother, speaking of the education of her children, expressed regret that they were not taught carpentry. The visitor turned to the eleven-year-old boy and asked him if he didn't have manual training. He replied that he did, but "she doesn't understand." A careful study of the answers to the questions in our attempt to get parents' attitude toward the children's schooling shows, then, that while a few exceptional parents have been able to follow their children's schooling, the great majority of them have not. It suggests that some of them are willing and ready to do it if only some of the obstacles were removed, and that there are also a large number who do not realize the necessity of it, and for whom something more must be done. The opportunity of the school, and various devices for rendering aid at this point, that have been tried, will be discussed in a later chapter. The failure of the parents to understand not only means confusion and worry for them, but for the child lack of the help and sympathy at home that they might have. It becomes more serious as the child reaches the age when he is no longer compelled by law to attend school, and the decision as to whether or not he shall go on rests with his parents. When the parents have not known about the work he has been doing, and have no means of judging how much or how little he has learned, they are obviously in no position to make a decision about his further education. There are many forces at work to influence the immigrant parent to put the child to work at once. There is, first of all, in many cases, economic pressure. Sometimes the child's earnings are actually needed to make up the family budget for current expenditures. In some families, however, his earnings are not so much needed as desired, to help in buying property more often than for any other reason. In these cases it seems clear that the attitude toward the child as a means of contributing to the welfare or prestige of the family is a very important factor. One Polish doctor with whom we conferred emphasized this point. He said that the Polish parent expected to stop work at an early age and live on the earnings of his children. Hence he took his children out of school as soon as the law allowed, and had them start work.