Marriage “for better or for worse”

Press, 14 June 1978, Page 18

Marriage “for better or for worse”

Sir, — The report of an address by Ms Fenwick at the solo parents’ seminar (“The Press,” June 13) should not go unchallenged. Her naive claims that women marry because they are forced to, that the spinster “is a deviant” or that “women are encouraged to regard their unhappiness as a personal failing” reinforce the probability that her theories are unmarred by fact. Solo parent feminists claim that separated and divorced women are generally badly off financially. The benefits available and the division of property equally are not enough for them; they want to be paid salaries for their rearing of children, they want special flying squads of police to tend to their non-molestation orders and they want maintenance orders enforced to the extent that passports should be restricted. They do not talk about the half million or so New Zealanders on a lower standard of living than themselves; they do not talk about the taxpayer. — Yours, etc., P. A. SCOTT. June 13, 1978.