Social Pressures On Marriage Outlined

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30712, 30 March 1965, Page 2

Social Pressures On Marriage Outlined

Young women learning “man-manipulation” from about eight years; boys being down-graded in many families; the father-son relationship being strained to the utmost and the emergence of “mummy’s boy” husbands, were problems resulting from the emanicipation of women, said the Roman Catholic Bishop of Christchurch (the Most Rev. B. P. Ashby) at a Cana conference held recently by the Mairehau branch of the Christian Family Movement.

“The tragedy is that the manmanipulating girl really wanted a caveman for a husband,” he said. “Everything in her education and environment led her inevitably to a non-caveman, so she ended up with a neurosis. One can hope, however, that this is a sweeping generalisation and not true of anyone here today.”

Speaking to 61 married couples at the conference on “Marriage in the Modern World,” Bishop Ashby said the emancipation of women had placed a whole new complexion on married life and he, personally, felt the pendulum had swung a bit too far. Changes in social conditions and modern pressures were reflected in marriage. The exaltation of personal liberty meant that if two persons entered marriage, equally conditioned to personal rights, liberty and independence, union could only be possible by intelligent and mutual discussion. Generous, mutual surrender of each party was necessary with the assessment of the common aims of marriage. Feminine emancipation also brought its problems. For Better, For Worse

“A man marries his wife for what she is,” he said. “If she is vivacious, lively, intelligent and educated fully to her personality, she is the girl he married. In 1865, he might have expected her to

put out the lights of her personality, look and act a dumb Dora. He can’t in 1965. “His jealousies, his primal instincts for mastery, his male ego, must be intelligently surveyed in the light of the fact that he married a late model —slacks and shorts rather than crinolines. “He is faced with the modern problem of a woman who is his equal and may be his superior—and knows it,” he said. Mutual Encounter

The modern husband was forced to mutual encounter with her on a level she understood and appreciated. “By the same token, both he and she must recognise even more carefully the fundamental differences between man and woman,” he said. “She must realise that, in spite of equality in many directions, woman is synonymous with maternal instinct and the capacity for sacrifice. Selfishness in a woman is, basically, a denial of her femininity.” The family needed the fulltime protection of both partners if it was to resist social

dangers. Intelligent co-opera-tion by both partners, as in the Christian Family Movement, could change the social climate of public opinion. In fact, there were signs that it was already doing so—a Christian reaction to the spiritual bankruptcy facing the world. Friendship The basic ingredient of modern marriage was friendship—“mutual dialogue”—on all that pertained to marriage; an intelligent appraisal as befitted people educated to intelligent appraisal; mutual confidence as befitted friends.

“Forgive, gently correct, give a better example in the interests of friendship, he said. “In this concept of friendship, tender, enduring love blooms every step into progress.” The same intelligence and human prudence would manifest itself in the question of children—their adequate education was as much an end of marriage as their procreation. Divine Love Over and above natural friendship and its resultant true, deep love, was the driving force of divine charity—the two earthly loves blended and purified in the flame of divine love; two earthly beings, imperfect, limited, struggling, but sustained and sanctified by the Being who created them and pre-ordained for them their sacred vocation of marriage. “That is your birthright and the ultimate key to your success as Catholics, holding between you the sacred covenant of the sacrament of matrimony,” he said. In the positive beauty of married love, with its daily happiness and quiet joys, its generosity in sacrifices, its prudent outlook on the procreation and education of children, the negative concept of birth control blown up out of all proportion was a travesty, Bishop Ashby said.