ARE FATHERS NECESSARY?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3383, 18 July 1927, Page 8

ARE FATHERS NECESSARY?

(By Allison Settle.) As one of two generations of latherless girls, I ask myself whether fathers are really necessary or whether they are only luxuries in life. Of course, we won id ail like uncles, generous, godfathers, nice cousins for our children, but do fathers now come into that category? mere are now women all over me country who are in the position of cringing up chile.re 11 without iatheis. Are the children the worse for that? In my mother’s day a man certainly had been’, though he might no longer be, necessary, because from a man done came an income. In our day it s quite usual for the woman to he the breadwinner for her own children. Numbers of my contemporaries were ke myself, brought up fatherless, lor nitiative, resource, courage and clear hinking I do not think those friends 1 f mine can he beaten. Nevertheless they all had a tremendous feeling of something lacking hey all looked upon fathers as tin nost desirable thing in the world. Did iot their whole lives’ comfort depend ■,pon there having been a man win irovided their mothers and themselves vith an income, the income which made ife possible? The earlier the fathoi md died and the smaller the inconn eft, the greater the feeling of loss he ause the less the comfort and security Yet here we are again, grown now md tli£ mothers of children, children which we arc able to support with on nvn earnings. Is there something lading now for our fatherless children : Does a mother who can provide an in onic, a home, a brain to be drawn on—does she supply all that our children need or have they lost something irreplaceable in not having any longer a father? '

Women are adaptable. They are also hardy. So the mother of to-day who has to earn an income rearranges her life to fill in twenty times as many tilings ns' she used to do; The women 1 know who earn and have children too have houses as well -nn as most of the leisured women, have pleasantly decorated houses, have 11 most better stall's in that they leave hem more to themselves.

They also manage to give a good deal •f their lime to the mental development if their children. Knowing that their ime is precious and. being taught, if mly by the lesson of death, how pro--ions life is, they concentrate as the lisured woman never lines. Your leisured mother means to ex >lain things to her children, hut tomuTow or next week will do just as veil. The working mother uses every pare moment for pleasure and the iiiugs she aims at because she is so •liankl'ul to have that leisure • -You may say that a woman out at vork all day cannot ho an influence on > child to any great extent. True, isho ia,s to depend enormously on the people he puts in charge of her children, hut dial more iiilluencc did a father have ■/ho also was out at work, golfing, who >t his children go to school from eight c IS?,

. . Yet, enormously, daily, alnnst hourly, i regret that my children hould have lost their father so early, hies that undo all I’ve argued? No. t isn’t that 1 think that fathers are ssentinl. It is that I want them to ave that particular father as an in-hic-nce- on their lives. It is only in this ase that I know myself to be nothing Ike so fine a woman as he was a man.

I happened to have for my children’s hither the ideal father. It is purely a nestiou of individuals. Give the hiklron an ideal father and bis lass ■muot be measured. Give thorn an leal mother, and their loss of a father s negligible. Character and grit is dead a pod almost more in fatherless chit Iren than in those with two parents