WHY HOT THE MEN ?

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVII, Issue 143, 19 June 1913, Page 3

WHY HOT THE MEN ?

FATHERHOOD: ITS RESPONSI-

BILITIES

ADDRESS BY LADY STOUT.

Lady Stout was the speaker at a meeting held under the ' auspices of the City Brotherhood, in "Wellington on Sunday afternoon, Dr Platts-Mills presiding. Lady Stout spoke on "The Responsibility of Fatherhood," and her address proved very interesting to the large audience (reports the Fast). Lady Stout, in opening, stated that it hadi been said that the twentieth century was the woman's and the child's, and yet we found that the most important factor in the higher development of the child—the fatherhood—was most completely ignored by

j. those who were Working for the care and protection of children and the improvement of the home. The -try was always train the girl so that she J would realist the' responsibilities of motherhood and devote her life to the | studies which would fit her for homemaking. This new development of responsibility has been taken up enthusiastically by women and men of thought and learning. Doctors and eugenists wrote innumerable books and pamphlets upon motherhood and the training for motherhood. All this agitation was carried on as if the mother alone, were responsible for the family. The father's part was completely ignored,, except as the legal owner and lord of the mother and the child. No one talked of training the boys to be good fathers, good husbands, and responsible guides for their children. The girl was to have her physical health carefully guarded from infancy. She was to be trained in all the essentials of wifehood ajid motherhood. Her ideals were to be high and her responsibilities great. This was all very well, and quite right, said Lady Stout, but what was to happen when the trained girl, with high ideals of motherhood, married a man who had been trained to believe it was his right and. privilege to do what he liked, to lead any life he pleased—indulge in drink, gambling, immorality, and consider that it was manly to follow his free will in every action of his life, both before and after marriage? There was no one to condemn his careless disregard of his health; no one to warn him that his children would suffer if he indulged in alcohol, and that nicotine poison in his blood was much more detrimental to his child than any tight-lacing and high heels or pneumonia blouses which his wife might wear. , INFLUENCE OF THE FATHER. Besides, there was another and more important aspect of the questi6n: Man, or woman either, does not live by bread alone. The spiritual aspect of marriage must be considered, and if the future of the child depended upon the mother then the influence of the father and his treatment of" the mother had a far deeper and more reaching effect upon the child than food, clothing, or material comforts. Fortunately, said the speaker, the new consciousness of responsible motherhood which is being instilled into the minds of our girls is gradually making itself felt in the determination of women to demand equal responsibility in fatherhood. All the reform movements of the day are tending towards a better understanding and a fuller comradeship between men and women. As women develop they will not be willing to accept man at his own valuation, but will demand that his life should be regulated on lines which/ will make the conditions of the family more equal and on a higher plane. - The responsibilities of fatherhood mean in the main at the present day all that is involved in the saying that a healthy body means a healthy mind. All the schemes for j the endowment' of motherhood and ! the training for motherhood are as naught compared with the endowment of a healthy fatherhood. The only endowment of a mother, and, under the divine law, the supreme endowment of her womanhood, is a fatherhood worthy of parentage. If the father fails, the whole process of race development fails, and the progress of the race is set back. Up'to now the .father has mostly failed. When man realises 'his responsibilities and ceases to look upon women as inferiors the new life of the race will have begun. The new and true humanity will be borne of parents fully awake to the responsibilities of parenthood—the divine offices of f atherhopd and motherhood.