MARRIAGE AND MORALS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 123, 25 May 1923, Page 4

MARRIAGE AND MORALS.

A great many people must have been surprised nnd shocked to read the grave aspersion- Unit a visiting Bishop from Australia had cast, on New Zealand women in an address nt the Anglican Congress at.« < hristchurch. Tbe Press Association reports him as citing a New /.calami Government report "lo show thnt of women becoming mothers for the first time ill tho Dominion each year more than half had been unchaste,'' and later in the address as referring to the report, of the <'omniil tee ol" the Xew Zealand Hoard of Health, published last year, "with ils appalling statement tb t. of nil the young mothers in Xew .'• .In ml .•.' least bait have been unchaste." Bishop White based bis remarks on a passage in the Venereal Disease report lost year, the appendix to which contains a tabic of birth statistics. He bus not, however, studied with sufficient care either these figures or the fuller statistics to be found in the Year Hook, lie attacks the whole of the young married womanhood of the Dominion, whereas the committee's table concerns only unmarried mothers and mother, who bore children within one year after marriage. 'I*lie Year Hook states that "out of 100 marriages which have issue at. all. the first child is born within one year of marriage in over ">0 cases, within two years in S.'l cases, and after the expiry of two years in the remaining 17 cases. - ' Therefore, approximately 50 per cont of mothers do not bear a child within the first year, consequently their child-bearing cannot be cited as evidence of uneliastity. The committee's table show's that out of :1...73_ legitimate first births within one year of marriage, in the period 1913-1921, 12.-2.1.*- occurred within the first six months after marriage, and 14,833 within tbe first seven months. These figures are considerablyless than r>o per cent. To get the true value of statistic? relating to births in the seventh, eighth and ninth months one would need medical testimony. As Mrs. McCombs points out in her reply to the Bishop, the committee's statement that "more than 150 per cent of the total first births occurring within twelve months of marriage result from sexual contact prior to marriage." has been arrived at by adding to all the births within seven months, all the illegitimate births, whether first births or not. She also makes the point we have made above, that ;*)0 per cent of the total first births within a year of marriage cannot be construed into 50.per cent of total first births. The Year Book figures for 1921 show that of 4SS2 legitimate first births within a year of marriage 242!) were born in "under nine -months." A statement has also come from Sir Francis Bell that the figures in the committee's report are inaccurate. If this is so, it is very regrettable, for the report has gone all over the world. The social evils disclosed by the true position are quite grave enough without anybody trying, even with the best intentions, to make them worse.