CRIME AMONG CHILDREN

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27989, 8 June 1956, Page 13

CRIME AMONG CHILDREN

DAME HILDA ROSS BLAMES PARENTS

(New Zealand Press Association) WHANGAREI, June 7.

Every able-bodied man in employment, who had a wife • and family should keep his wife at home to look after the children, said the Minister of Social Welfare (Dame Hilda Ross' to a public meeting at the Whangarei Town Hall. Juvenile delinquency was, in many cases, parental delinquency, she said. Children did not suddenly go wrong when they reached 15 or 16. They went off the rails wnen they came home from school, their mothers being still at work, and ran the streets until teatime.

Dame Hilda Ross said she did not like to see the children pushed off on to neighbours, or anyone else. She had never said that married •women should not work. They were free as the air to do as they liked, but not when they had children. Many delinquent children were a result of broken marriages, Dame Hilda Ross said.

A husband and wife were supposed to take each other for better or worse, but she did not know whether they really thought: “Till I am sick of him <or her).’’

“Who suffers from this? The children,” she said. “Who are getting into trouble all the time? The children. “We should go back to the days when we meant what we said. When we take an oath we should mean it. Marriage should be something sacred.”