Proposals feared

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33092, 6 December 1972, Page 7

Proposals feared

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) CHICAGO, Dec. 5.

A child-care specialist from New Zealand says she fears the women’s liberation movement proposals for child care might lead to extended emotional illness among children left in day-care centres.

A speech therapist, the founder of the New Zealand Parents’ Centre, and the mother of five children, Mrs Helen Brew said the feminist movement advocated good ideas about equality, but she feared that its proposals for child rearing might lead to “a new wave of extended emotional illness in the next generation.” Mrs Brew, of Wellington, said she objected particularly to the idea of having “specialists to bring up your child” — placing the child in a nursery or day centre at too early an age just so that the mother could go to work.

Mrs Brew said welladjusted women would not be moved by such proposals, but for others, “this sort of push by women’s leaders can swing them to dump babies

into nurseries and institutions before they are ready.” As a speech therapist she had seen “the desperation of pain of unloved children” in the cases which she treated. “Loved children adequately nurture their own children who grow up to be warm sexual partners and from the nucleus of the stable family setting,” she said.