Women’s role changes

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32861, 9 March 1972, Page 17

Women’s role changes

This century a considerable change had been seen in the role of women in our culture, the Medical Superintendent at Sunnyside Hospital (Dr T. E. Hall) said yesterday when addressing the national conference of the New Zealand Society of Physiotherapists in Christchurch yesterday.

Much had been said and written about the change but few had drawn attention to the inevitable alteration in the male role which must follow, said Dr Hall. Changes of this kind, however desirable they might seem, gave rise to difficulties of adaptation — more difficult for some than others.

If women were to go out to work and to pursue careers there would be changes in family life which would affect the children. “I am not arguing that this is necessarily bad,” said Dr Hall. “There has already been a fundamental change in cur family pattern, from the extended family to the nuclear family, which even in the large city may be quite isolated. “In the 1967 Reith Lectures, Edmund Leach said that 'in the past kinsfolk and neighbours gave the individual continuous moral support throughout his life. Today the domestic household is isolated. The family looks inward upon itself; there is an intensification of emotional stress between husband and wife, and parents and children. The strain is greater than most of us can bear. Far from being the basis of good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontent*. “Leach was astonished at the anger and acrimony that these remarks produced,” said Dr Hall. “He had hit at our deep-rooted and cherished sentiments about the idealised family.”

Industrialisation had resulted in a population drift to urban centres which appeared to have caused some of the social ills. The affluent society appeared to have produced more problems than it had solved. Man’s basic needs could be given as a need for identity, security and stimulation.

“In this complex industrial

society there are many whose jobs give little sense of identity or feelings of per-

sonal worth so necessary to normal mental health,” said Dr Hall.

“Although we may feel secure as to our basic physical needs, too much security and too little stimulation readily gives rise to boredom. The bored individual seeks for stimulation; the individual who feels a nonentity resents this and is an angry person. “I would suggest that these are among the causes of senseless crime and violence, the fashion of drug taking, the demand for pornography, and other forms of sensation cpplrinp ” There was evidence to suggest that changes in society were being brought about at an ever-increasing rate and that this process would continue unless some way to control it was learnt, said Dr Hall. “There is considerable likelihood that man’s powers of adaptation will be unable to cope with this situation—perhaps already we are feeling the strain and reacting accordingly,” said Dr Hall. He said he envisaged a state of emotional shock which in his opinion, along with pollution, over-popula-tion and the fear of nuclear war must be listed as one of mankind’s major problems.