PAYING MOTHERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 109, 10 May 1943, Page 3

PAYING MOTHERS

NATION'S INTEREST Bonuses For Babies Suggested By Professor N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright Rec. 10 a.m. SYDNEY, this day. "Mothers should be paid to have babies—£loo for the first, £200 for the second, and increasing amounts up to £1000 for the 10th," declared Squadron-Leader Mayes, professor of obstetrics at Sydney University. He is also the gynaecological consultant to the Waafs. "A mother is the country's No. 1 public servant," he said in a Mother's Day interview. "It should not cost a woman a penny to h"ve a baby. If ever a citizen should be reimbursed for public service, it is the woman who supplies the country with its posterity. It now costs the - average Australian family £50 to £70-: to have a baby. But the wife shoulct\ be well paid for doing this great service to her country." Warning that the absorption of women into war industry and auxiliary services would mean a further decline in Australia's birthrate, Squadron-Leader Mayes added that he believed most of these women would be glad to return to the normal " humdrum existence of homes and •_ babies. If they were not the corf-^ ; sequences for themselves personally,--as well as for their country, would be disastrous.