AMONG OURSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 123, 27 May 1930, Page 13

AMONG OURSELVES.

A WEEKLY BUDGET. (By CONSTANCE CLYDE.) THE DIVORCE EVIL. As discussion on divorce increases, one's interest goes more and more to the psychology of those so keen on increasing disruption of the home. There are now many, like Judge Lindsey, of American fame, who helieve in a new kind of divorce court, "manned" (they do not say "womanned") by three kinds of specialists, the trained psychiatrist, the medical specialist, and a specially trained attorney. Judge and jury are to be banished. Probably nine out of ten of those who advocate this change have only a dim idea of what a psychiatrist really is, and still lees notion of how he is trained. We are certainly word-ridden, with little realisation of the psychological fact that the man who spends his life studying the abnormal, soon sees it everywhere, and should therefore have small power when a penalty is to be inflicted. Here again, however, the power of words comes in. The wife may be deprived of her marriage status and of her children, but this is not a "penalty"—it is an "adjustment." It is considered that the case of the child (with divorced parents) has been overstressed. Appealing plays and novels have been written concerning the children of the divorcees, but now these are becoming numerous and old enough to give ther own case. The going to and fro from mother and stepfather to father and stepmother was not so bad as is made out, and "if one looked back with some distaste as the forced six months with father and stepmother (always worse than the other six months with stepfather) one just shrugged one's shoulders, such is life.". So says one such adult. But, after all, shoulder-shrugging over a broken-up family is not exactly our ideal.

WOMEN AND INDUSTPIAL REVOLUTION. In a resume of women's industrial position during the nineteenth century, we have some rather startling facts to brighten the main truth that women on the whole were exploited. For instance, when an industry suited for feminine fingers first came in, there were often, for a period, high wages—such was the straw plaiting for hats, this form of headgear being fairly new. It is mentioned that while a cottage labourer, at this time, would be earing only nine shillings a week, his wife would be receiving thirty shilliigs. In the making of lace runners, again, there were high wages for a time. It is not to be wondered at that the women resisted going to the factory, preferring their own'homes—though in the long run factory work was found better, the system not favouring absolute sweating- quite so much. In reference to field work, there is mentioned a similar anomaly. Such toil made a slave of the woman, yet it is mentioned that in gleaning, then allowed, a girl might gather five or six bushels of wheat, representing the value of twelve weeks' wages. With new land laws that came in during the century, however, English "Ruths lost the right to do well for themselves in this way.

A PRISON APPOINTMENT. Hollo-vvay is the prison for women near London, and it has always seemed to women that the chairmanship of the visiting justices' committee should be given to a woman. After many years of opposition, Mrs. Jean Dewar has been elected to the position. There are women on the committee, and, for many years, there has been a visiting lady doctor, the first being Dr. Gordon, who is a novelist as well It has often been stated, perhaps unjustly, that many women prisoners are of the type that should be kept to their own sex. The instant they commit a misdemeanour, however, they enter a man world, arrested by a male policeman, tried by a man judge, with men jurors, defended by a male lawyer, and attended later by a man physician. Women have done much for the relief of their own sex in gaols. It will be remembered that a woman's organisation was responsible for the change from cell to room and other improvements in one of our own women's prisons, now a reformatory. But it is held by many that their power should be greater. The old idea of woman cruel to her own sex dies hard. In one case at least, a prison matron was severe to the inmates, not permitting even the outlet of talk over the washtubs, but this, as is so often the way, was because of the severe man official, her superior, keen on discipline.

ONE CO-EDUCATIONAL SCHOOL. That a co-educational school means effeminacy in regard to the boys is disrupted by the headmaster of St. George's, Harpenden, which appears to have been the first estabtishment of this kind. The ideaL it seems, has been working for quite thirty years. He gives instances of old St. George's boys who did well later in the athletic world, mentioning an ex-pupil who won the 100 yds race against Cambridge. This school is the best of its kind, with swimming bath, gymnasium, crafts room, etc., the boys indulging in Rugby and cricket on their own, while the girls, also on their own, practise lacrosse and hockey. Both sexes play tennis and fives in common. Though a fairly long description of such schools is given, is hard to discover just how far the sexes are intermingled. Whether, for instance, they share the same dining room and study in the same rooms in the evening. One has rather a suspicion that the establishments of this kind which succeed are really more "educational" than "co." It is interesting to note that this particular establishment has departments for children of all ages, from two (the Montessori department) to nineteen. Even those who have been converted to the ideal frankly admit that it .is by no means suitable to all, and instance one ex-pupil who maintained later-that the atmosphere had been "too stimulating" for her, while for ■children of a highly sensitive nature, coeducation is declared actually detrimental. One may consider logical enough, the belief of its value for an only child, supplying the lack of brother or sister in its own home.