PARENTS AND CHILDREN

Evening Star, Issue 19387, 22 October 1926, Page 11

PARENTS AND CHILDREN

SCOPE FOR MOTHERS' OHIOH WISE WORDS FROM CARON NEVILL Canon Nevill, speaking in tho Anglican Synod yesterday on tho motion in support of the Mother’s Union, said that that union in New Zealand had to deal with quite now problems to-day to those in Victorian times, in tho old days tho home was much more the centre of family life than it is to-day. The children of the Georgian era have far more interests and amusements away from homo than they had. Pictures, cabarets, out-of-door life have revolutionised the home, and, luckily for them, the parents share in these things to a very largo extent, and bccomp the companions of_ their children. Again, school life has widened very much. Children are not only taught the three R’s. but a great deal is done in the teaching of self-dis-cipline and self-control. Children, through such organisations as League of Nations and the _ Navy League especially, are taught their part in tho corporate life of the nation. They loam that their actions matter not only to themselves, but to others, and so they learn to avoid acts prejudicial to themselves and in others. Such an organisation as iho .Mothers’ Union links together tho sense of Divine responsibility between parent and child. However good tho homo may bo in snecial instances, there are many more homes where there is no guidance and very little good influence of any sort. The old methods M family coercion so familiar to our fathers are dead and gone. No longer can children ho dragooned into good citizens. That method. tho_ method of the stick and tho slipper, is not only bad in itself as estranging parent and child, but leads to the inevitable revolt from parental authority as tho child grows up. Granted that physical correction is necessary at times, such method is always to he deplored and avoided if possible. Coercion, both mental and physical, result in estrangement, sulkiness, and sccrctiveness, and eventually to tho loss of any family life at all.

Some parents wonder why they do not get on with their children in later years, but, as a rule, they have only themselves to thank for that outcome of carelessness, mixed with occasional violence, which sunders tho tie between parent and child. And the_ right course is plain. Children are just as easily influenced by loving parents now as they wore in the past, and even more so, for they nro more capable of a ready response to affection, mingled with respect. Wo must recognise that to-day our children have rights, anu liberties, too. The old cocrcionist method—“speak when you’re spoken to, come when your’e called” —do not work now; and, in fact, never did. They only gave birth to family deceit and make-believe. They made the mother sometimes a partner with her children in hiding their little delinquencies from the father; but they never led to mutual trust and affection, which tho parents expected. If there had been a little more understanding and sympathy there would not have been that dreadful splitting apart of tho family when tho hoys and girls went out into the world and ceased to take any interest in their parents any more. Tho Mothers’ Union’s aim is partly that mothers should learn the wisdom of growing up with their children, and so help to make--them true and loyal fellow-workers in their homes and lives. One of the very greatest, i hstaoles to religion lias been that the children, ns they grew up, could not help seeing that their parents did not practise what they preached. They sent tho children to church perhaps, but only acted as a signpost to some place where they never wont. Naturally the children grew up with a scorn and contempt for empty profession. The Mothers’ Union tries to roach the life of mother and child at its well-spring; tries to make the homo Hfo spring from tho only source from which true home life can spring, the sense that the home itself is sanctified by tho motive in which alone all true life can bo lived. Such a life will inspire affection, trust, and confidence in tho child, and will always bo the true taproot of any wholesome national life in the future.