The New Home Life

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 201, 2 August 1924, Page 10

The New Home Life

WIFELY PHILOSOPHY

(By Stella Harley.)

The mentality of the modern wife and mother has undergone a salutary change. Increasingly she realises that there are two great motive forces in the whirligig of life; a fatal facility for boredom and an inherent love of change. Gallantly she faces the fact that if the domestic atmosphere ig to attract instead of to repel, she must make ample allowance for this human mutability. She feels it is high time to sprinkle a few live ideas among the inanimate household gods her grandmother worshipped. She realises that it is well to cultivate a philisophic charity that understands all and forgives all. She has long since taken it for granted that even the best of husbands and children have a way of just accepting her housewifely zeal and skill without comment. She has schooled herself to be content with the approbation of her own conscience, and the secret knowledge that if she lets go. if the flowers disappeared from the table, the casual home folk would soon find their tongues! Valiantly, too. sh© has learnt to acknowledge that sh© cannot hope to lie everything in the world to husband or children. And that an unobstrusive sympathy a wise pursuit of th© quiet waiting game, is a better policy than the old insistent, aggressive maternal solicitude; and much more likely to ensur© her the love and the confidence of her brood. Th© wifely and motherly role is. made easier by the occasional relaxation of the monitress attitude.

and the substitution of the chum and playmate. No big undertaking, it is true, for the busy housewife; but well worth the effort. And when even the ideal mother is left alone at times, as she is by the most appreciative of husbands and childiren with many external interests, these are the welcomed opportunities to keep alive her own interests; to maintain her mental alertness; to garner new harvests of entertainment and charm. And her home atmosphere graciously reflects this constant enrichment of her personality. “Mother will understand! She has such breadth, of mind! And she’s such a sport!” There is no sweeter tribute to the modern wife and mother’s ear. And when the young ones have fled the nest, mother has still her carefully fostered interests to fall back upon, and to forge an unbreakable link with sons and daughters ( who, having acquired responsibilities of their own will appreciate her more 1 than ever. They will visit mother in th© old home, not at th© dictates of duty but of the heart. Under the happiest conditions woman is necessarily the selfsacrificing factor in the marriage partnership. But in her modern wisdom she does not make a mournful martyrdom of the immutable laws of nature. She cultivates a fine honesty, and admits the indisputable truth that woman loves the glow of self-efface* ment —as much a part of her as is the protective instince in man. Despite her critics, there is little danger that the modern wife and mother will overdo the nurture of her own individuality. But what she will achieve, by the pursuit of her independent interests, is a state of reasoned contentment that ensures an atmosphere of domestic stimulus and good cheer.