Family research urged

Press, 29 April 1978, Page 21

Family research urged

A major research programme on the family should be undertaken by social scientists in New Zealand, says Mr B. H. Easton, an economics lecturer at the University of Canterbury. Speaking at a meeting arranged by the National Organisation for Women to look at reductions in the domestic purposes benefit, Mr Easton said that the benefit provided a “challenge to our conventional and complacent assumptions.” Public discussion on attitudes to marriage and families was necessary, he said. Discussion should be “broad-ranging, creative, and controversial in an order to find out What the people who are married and have families really think.

“The problem today is that such a discussion is a sort of closet one, where the issues are only alluded to,” Mr Easton said. “The domestic purposes benefit is one way to bring it into the open.” Mr Easton said that perhaps more than 50 per cent of children in New Zealand might experience a period of solo parenthood as their parents changed partners. An indication that this might already apply was evident in the average period for which the benefit was paid — 18 months. A distinction must be made between marriage, and between families, Mr Easton said. The distinction was expected in the divorce law changes to be introduced this year, which would make divorce simple in childless marriages. The State had a very real responsibility where children were involved, said Mr Easton.

“Where efficient contraception exists so that adults have realistic choices in their family size, then the investment element in children means that society is morally obliged to support its children, economically,” he said. The principle behind the introduction of the domestic purposes emergency benefit, in 196'8 was revolutionary, Mr Easton said. It established that the mother could take an action to become a solo mother and still be en-

titled to a social security benefit. "Before and elsewhere we have implicitly assumed that entitlement to a social security benefit was a result of circumstances outside the control of the beneficiary.” More women apparently had exercised that new freedom. Those near these changes "panicked” and set up the “not very authoritative Domestic Purposes Tribunal, which attempted to stem the tide by making the choice more difficult,” said Mr Easton.