Call on Govt to help families

Press, 22 April 1986, Page 2

Call on Govt to help families

The Government should introduce better policies to help New Zealand families, according to the national organiser for Women For Life, Mrs Connie Purdue. She was speaking in Christchurch yesterday, and addressed a meeting of the Women For Life, Christchurch branch on Sunday evening. With her was Mrs Wendy Anderson, convener of the new branch committee. Women For Life supported greater provision for first-home ownership, an adequate breadwinner’s wage, and appropriate family taxation as three steps towards supporting family life in New Zealand, Mrs Purdue said. Women with children should not have to enter the workforce out of economic necessity, she said. “I call upon all groups to make positive statements about the value and importannce of family life,” she said. “The promotion by the Government of aids for mothers to enter the workforce, by selling taxpayer-sub-sidised childcare dubbed “early education” and after-school clubs, would ape the Soviet Union system.” Most women planned some years of motherhood and homemaking, said Mrs Purdue. They should have the choice to do this and to return to the workforce in later life. Women For Life supports greater recognition of the complementary role that the two sexes have to play. The group also seeks economic and social policies that recognise the contribution made by women as mothers and homemakers to the well-being of society.