HELP IN THE HOME

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 106, 6 May 1936, Page 10

HELP IN THE HOME

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —The proposed formation of a domestic servants' union serves to forcibly bring before the public the subject of domestic service generally. The notices which have appeared in the Press up to the present have contained some reference to the benefits which will accrue to employers as a result of trained domestics being employed under the award. May I ask who is going to train the domestics? As the male head of a family of growing children. I have for twenty years sympathised with a mother who offers good wages and a comfortable home, putting up with a procession of socalled domestic servants who, for the most part, are utterly untrained.

I have noticed a reference to the scarcity of employment of domestics. Whoever made that remark is ignorant of actual conditions. It is well known amongst housewives that it is extremely hard to get domestics at all, and, as for trained domestics, they are practically impossible to obtain. If the Government would institute a training school for domestic servants where they could learn the business and become skilled workers, earning wages according to their grade, there would be no dearth of positions waiting for them, and thousands of New Zealand homes would be better places to live in.

We are generally considered a progressive country with our Plunket system, milk system, educational facilities, hydro-electric schemes, etc., but as for helping mothers to live comfortably while bringing up New Zealand families we have a long way to go. If we are to increase our population it should be made as easy as possible for mothers to bring up their children and live at home in a congenial atmosphere. If-domestic help is unobtainable people live in flats—often giving up a home to do so—and people in flats do not have large families, if they have any at all.—l am, etc.,

HARASSED FATHER.