MOTHERCRAFT

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 58, 12 March 1929, Page 15

MOTHERCRAFT

A WISER GENERATION

IMPORTANCE. OF TEACHING

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, 24th January. Lady Dawson of Penu, wife of the wellknown \Physician-in-Ordinary to the King aud '■Chairman of the South Kensington branch-of the Mothercraft.-Training Oenire', has mi interesting article in the ''Evening News" entitled "Meeting the Needs.of the Mothers of England" The writer has been on the committee of the Mothercraft Training Centre,' now at Highgate, ever since its inception in the Mother Country. \- ; In an interesting and sympathetic articled Lady; Dawson of Perm remarks:— "Twenty years ago the study of 'Mothercraft' was an almost entirely professional one. The average girl married either in absolute ignorance or with the vaguest conception of the meaning of marriage, and certainly without any knowledge of how to rear a baby. It would have been thought indelicate to speak openly of babies before marriage. At the beginning of the present century public attention was called to the high rate of infant mortality, and infant welfare centres and schools for mothers* were started by voluntary committees. These were intended for the benefit of poor and ignorant mothers. The well-educated woman was not included in the scheme.

"The growth of this work revealed an urgent need for universal education on this all-important- subject, and thinking people realised the significance of Herbert Spencer's words: 'Is it not monstrous that the fate of a uew generation should' be left to the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy—joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses, and prejud iced counsel of grandmothers? To tens of thousands that are killed, add hundreds of thousands that Burvive with feeble constitutions, and millions that grow up with constitutions not bo strong as they should be; and you will have some idea of the curse inflicted on their offspring by parents ignorant of the laws of life." "To-day the craft of Motherhood is widely and sympathetically recognised and numberless books have been written on the subject. A LONG-FELT WANT. The Red Cross Society has added a Mothercraft Course of lectures to its cum-, culum, and mothers of all classes go to Infant Welfare Centres for advice. Sir George Newman, in his last report, emphasises the importance of such teaching for school girls aB well as for expectant mothers. In 1918 the Mothercraft Train ing Society was founded, its whole object being the education of doctors, nurses, parents, and all women in the science of to the upper and middle classes, but making no distinction of any kind—all being asked to give what they could honestly afford. '.- '-■ „ "I have been on the committee since its inception, and the wonderful and rapid growth of it. has proved to me that we are meeting a long-felt want. For myself I have often wished that such a society had existed when my own children were young." . . '. Information is given about the various lectures, and Lady Dawson of Perm concludes with the hope that, as time goes on; the society will be able to respond to every demand, so that all girls may have the opportunity to learn, before marriage, how to carry on efficiently that most glorious of all professions, "motherhood/ . .