N.Z. women not putting careers before babies

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33791, 13 March 1975, Page 6

N.Z. women not putting careers before babies

There is still a lot of pressure on New Zealand girls to marry young and have families by the time they are about 23, believes Mrs Margaret Brant, lecturer in health education at the University College Hospital Medical School,! London.

Statistics showing that: women are having babies younger support Mrs Brant’s impressions, formed on a return visit here after 13 years in London. Mrs Brant and her obstetrician and gynaecologist husband, Mr H. A. Brant) are in Christ-! church after attending the! centenary celebrations of the! Otago Medical School. This situation is contrary, she says, to what is happening in London, where, from her experience, she finds many women are waiting until they are in their 30s to have their first child. As the medical school’s co-ordinator of ante-natal education programmes, Mrs Brant has seen many women who have elected to pursue a career before settling down and having children. ‘REAL WORRY’ She says the choice of. whether to have children! early or late is, of'

course, up to the individual, but she personally believes that a woman who has done everything she wants before having children will adapt much better to staying at home to perform the very important task of bringing up her children. “This is a very real worry of many women who come [to the ante-natal classes. They worry about whether they are going to be good mothers, whether they are prepared to stay at home/' Mrs Brant said. “Some of the older women have this worry too, but they don’t feel cheated out of the good times as the young ones do.” According to Mrs Brant’s husband, there is very little physical disadvantage in having a first baby later in life provided the women have good obstetrical care. FATHER AT BIRTH Both Mr and Mrs Brant have been giving lectures in Christchurch (they work together on many of their lectures) and both advocate the presence of the father at the birth of the child. “I think it should be a decision for the doctor and not one of policy,” said Mrs Brant. “I don’t understand why they should be excluded at the Christchurch Women’s Hospital when they are allowed to be present at the Auckland and Waikato women's hospitals ’

I There are fashions in the ideas surrounding childbirth : as there are in anything else! ■ and the trend today was to bring the atmosphere of the : home into the hospital. It was now becoming ! more common for women to be allowed to go home 48 ’ hours after the birth if there t had not been complications, . said Mrs Brant. She also r emphasised the need to 1 teach the hospital staff what J the women attending antenatal classes were learning. “It is no use teaching the liwomen to do all the right tj things during labour if the ti people attending them do ?!not also know what the women have been told to do. si “Labour is not an in-' s'tellectual exercise for the i j woman, there must 'be coi; operation between all con-! rcerned."