‘NO CHILD BORN BAD’: DUTIES OF PARENTHOOD

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 September 1949, Page 8

‘NO CHILD BORN BAD’: DUTIES OF PARENTHOOD

AUCKLAND. This Day (0.C.).— "No child, is ever born bad. When trouble arises it. is- not a naughty infant, but an incompetent mother, that is the cause,” said Dr Alice Bush, of Auckland, in an address on the mental and emotional development of the child, given in connection with Home and Family Week in the Remuera Library hall. When a child was “difficult,” - she said, it was because the mother had failed to cope with the problems that the child presented to her. It was found that the more intelligent and promising a child was, the more problems it would present to its mother.

The small child required love and security, and if it could be given both these it would not need much more, said the speaker. But this was not as simple as it sounded. She hoped that the importance of the father would be emphasised throughout Home and Family Week. “So many children we see today,” she added, “suffer from neglect during the war when they had only one parent. Two parents are necessary for the proper growth of the * child. Where one parent is missing the child’s life cannot be complete.” There were fewer and fewer stable marriages, more crime and an appalling incidence of nervous breakdowns in adult persons, said Dr Bush. All this was evidence of unstable personalities. Mistakes in the first five years of those people’s, lives were one of the chief factors causing that instability. Mrs N. E. F. Robertshawe, of Weir lington, said that in the past 30 years one had ceased to be able to count so confidently as in earlier periods on home and family being a stable facto, in life. It was in the family and m the home that children learned how to feel toward other people and-other things. “On this is going to depend whether we grow up good or bad,, happy or miserable,” said Mrs Robertshawe. “This generation is one that thinks very highly of love, as is shown by the emphasis in* films, plays and books. We P as Christians must be glad of that, but unfortunately so often the really important things about love are missed, out ” she said. Modern life in the cities did’ not help to keep the family together as was the . case in earlier times on the farms,, where interests were shared. The way to increase' love was for people to enjoy things together, for love between people grew as they loved things' together. The Church was one of the great supports of family life . * " ■