FAMILY LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 86, 8 October 1935, Page 15

FAMILY LIFE

WHAT IS COMING?

Shortly after the war, it looked as though family life was to be a thing of the past, writes Lady Norah Churchill in "The Queen." Young people who came under the spell o£ emancipation questioned, where once they were snubbed. The future held out golden hopes, and they sought individual happiness, untrammelled by companionship. It was, indeed, a land of promise, but they forgot that true emancipation is to be found within the domestic circle.

In .the good old days I remember at Blenheim grandmother and grandfather living in patriarchal style with their children, grandchildren, governesses, and nurses seated round the family table. At one end grandmother would carve the joint facing grandfather at the other. Family prayers were held each morning at half-past nine, and the servants according to precedence filed in. Such a household does not exist in these times. But the family life of that day also includes a delightful interest in one another's lives. A mother would question each daughter as to what she had been doing that day, whom she had met, did she find Mr. So-and-so very interesting, and the girl would have to give an account of her time.

MODERN INCONSIDERATENESS. The modem girl just says to her mother at luncheon, "Mum, I am motoring up to town to spend the night with the Berkeleys. We are going to the play and dining afterwards." "When ■will you be back," says mother gently, "as I rather wanted the car?" "I do not know," replies Miss Modern. "It all depends on how long the Berkeleys can have me." This inconsiderateness is entirely modern. It never existed nor would it have been countenanced in the past.

But after all family life is an ordained relationship and will never wholly perish. There is no period when it has not existed in some shape or other. In the "wattle and daub" period the family shared a joint hearthstone, and what can be more poignant than the discovery the other day from a barrow, of a man and woman, presumably husband and wife, with foreheads touching and hands clasped, sharing their last long sleep? In every age .women with their essential love of home have (sought to create a homelike life for I their young people.

Even in modernist circles # where groups of young • people work at emancipated tasks, it is rather pitiful how they strain finances to create for themselves some sort of semblance to a home. How proud they are of meagre hospitality, the uncomfortable chairs, the home-made table, the bookcase that threatens to collapse momentarily. Little do they suspect they are telling strangers their essential longing for family life. Wise parents not to interfere with youthful aspirations. Wise parents to send young sons and daughters into the world to learn something of the hard struggle that emancipation means, for it will make home life all the more precious. . SWING OF THE PENDULUM.

That is why I know the return of family life is welcome everywhere, even by the young people themselves, some of whom are sick of the very word emancipation. For, after all, family life built up nations. It was an education of the virtues, it taught the give-and-take of loyal companionship so necessary to young people. .In a, way I think nothing finer than modern youth. Young people view life with such set and serious purpose, realising that the | climb to achievement is going to take a good many years. And, after all, the sin of idleness is not a willing

fault in a world of falling markets. And I am sure that family life is the greatest world asset, as indestructible as the tides of the sea. It has built up empires and when it has ceased to exist they have been destroyed. It is the highest incentive of- man's life. It creates humanity and all that humanity stands for. In the blue have gone the too-familiar greetings of the postwar youth, and I predict a swing of the pendulum with the next generation. I am sure the stern discipline of the past will return. In the-meanwhile.

there are a great many Bright Young

People to be met with still, but I feel it is more of a pose. I believe in their hearts they are much more sympathetic than they allow the world to suspect.