REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 4 January 1928, Page 5

REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS.

MARRIAGE LAWS AND SEX KNOWLEDGE. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. LON DON, Jan. 2. “Take a- hint from the Melanesian marriage system,” was the outstanding proposal of Captain Pitt Rivers, author of various papers on ethnological, physological and eugenic subjects, in a startling address, “Why Marriages Fail,” before the .Eugenics Society. He said: “Despite the supposedly scientific age, many married people we re most ignorant of elementary facts of biology and psychology. In many parts of Melanesian, unmarried girls were free to receive lovers. Those prenuptial intrigues served as an apprenticeship ior marriage. Sweden had already taken the step of according legal recognition of unions which were outside marriage.”

Our present marriage system might be modified by a .form of concubinage,” he continued. “Who knows? Physical training and competitive games are often advocated as a safeguard against sexual development, as though sexual anaesthesia is the high ideal to be attained, this depreciation and repression of female sexuality is the root of the bankruptcy of Christian monoganums marriages.” Mrs. Hodson urged that emphasis should' be laid, not on loyalty before marriage, but on loyalty after marriage. The engagement should be regarded n.s something to be broken down.

Miss Catherine Furse said: “We must create a race of parents able to give their children requisite sex knowledge. The present knowledge should be conveyed Iby schools, as parents were not qualified. ,Miss Coles, superintendent of vne Middlesex Hospital Infant Welfare centre, speaking on ideal clothing ior babies was almost as revolutionary as Capt. Pitt Rivers. She agreed with wool clothing for babies in winter time, hut 'in summer, it woti.d lie better to emulate the Indians. Heie Miss (’ole held up a string of heads.