CHANGING ROLE OF FAMILY

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31832, 9 November 1968, Page 3

CHANGING ROLE OF FAMILY

Although the role of the family had changed considerably since the two world wars, it still had a necessary part to play if there were to be a stable society, Mrs Eileen Saunders, an officer of the Child Welfare Division, said recently.

“I do not believe that the family as we know it is finished. It is an institution which has been token for granted, but it has always been the basis of our society,” she said at the annual meeting of the Canterbury Play Centres Association.

The family used to have, for the most part, an authoritarian atmosphere. This had its drawbacks, but it also had advantages. “When we had authority we also had security." In the last 20 or 30 years, with education becoming more widespread, people, and particularly the youth, had started to question more. There was now a general attitude that authority and age were not automatically to be respected.

Although children matured earlier, they stayed at school longer, extending the period of dependance on their parents. There was also a limit to the amount of authority they would accept. With the changes in the structure of Western society, the family had become more self-conscious. This was good but, to some extent, unnatural, Mrs Saunders said. At one time the family was a little kingdom on its own. It waa bigger and included at least one grandparent and often unmarried aunts or uncles. Today’s family was smaller and much less selfsufficient “It has reached the stage that things which were once done in the family, such as bread baking, laundry and even oaring for children, are now done by outride contacts. It seems that everybody knows more than the parents,” she said. This tended to make the family less of a self-support-ing unit and to undermine the confidence of parents. Children could receive far more skilled and professional help than ever before, but the family still played the most important part by providing security for them. “It is the problems of the problem families that interest

people. If we are going to concentrate on family studies I think we should concentrate on the normaly family and its needs, and not wait until it becomes a problem family,” she said.