PLEA FOR HOME LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 156, 3 July 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

PLEA FOR HOME LIFE.

WORLD DECLINE IN MORALS. (By S.) It uscil to be. a doctrine with the 1 grundfatlicrs and graudmothers of those of us who are well on in years, that the proper place for a father and mother after tlio work and worry of the day was with tlie children at their own fireside. T'hey had strong views on the subject, and their enforcement of those views made their home, even when it was little better than a shed, both .vicrcd and sweet. A glance at the songs of a generation or two back will show how large and important a place the family life was wont to fill in national life. All that is now changed. There are multitudes of people to whom their residence is little better than a hotel. They may partake of a. couple of meals in it in the day, and make it their resting-place at night, but that is about all the use they put it to. They are away at work during the day, and want to get the taste of work out of their mouth at night, and, unlike the old people, to whom conversation and books were the chief panacea for weariness and care, they seek a tonic in the entertainments and distractions that are offered them elsewhere. The result is that their home life is tame and, maybe drab, they make but little if any acquaintance with real literature, and their conversation is commonplace talk and nothing more. It is a pity, for even the newspaper, the radio talk and the best pictures do not give us literature. "Frightful Precocity." But, what is worse, with a widespread decline in home life, has followed a widespread decline in religion and its corollary, morals. If numbers of people are getting a better share of the richness, spice, and variety that can be extracted from life than their forbears used to get, there are voices from many quarters telling us that they are getting it at a great cost—the cost of want of acquaintance with the best books and want of communion with one another, and with their God. Speaking of the result among the young in America, an American magazine remarked some time a<»o that public school investigations revealed a "frightful" precocity in sexual matters, that the streets were the breeding beds of vice, and that the late hours children of school age were allowed to keep was responsible for much of the nervous debility that handicaps many modern pupils. It went on to advocate the revival of the old curfew custom, at least so far as being indoor with the setting of the sun where children and young people were concerned, and hinted that if their fathers and mothers would let the custom speak to them, too, there would be a much needed improvement in the ethical tone of American towns. Too Many Entertainments. It would be stupid, as well as unjust, to condemn fathers and mothers for availing themselves to some extent of •the entertainments and distractions that help to counteract the reaction they feel after a spell of wearisome and monotonous work, and that in certain cases make some contribution to their culture. What the signs in general point to, however, is that many are making more use of them than is needful or wise; that their domestic, religious and moral life is being weakened and disintegrated in consequence, and that there is pressing need for many fathers and mothers to make their dwellings so sweet' and sacred, and so wisely governed that the home will regain the place in national life ft should never have been allowed to lose, and constrain its inmates, young and old, to say of it in the words of the old German proverb: "East or west, home is best." I have used the words "sweet" and "sacred" because' there will be no revival, no true and lasting revival in home life unless the presence of God is practised there. It is "they that dwell under His shadow" who "shall revive as the corn and grow a« the vine."