MODERN GIRL’S DOMESTIC ABILITY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 29 March 1938, Page 5

MODERN GIRL’S DOMESTIC ABILITY

CRITICISED BY PRESIDENT OF W.D.F.U. COMPULSORY DOMESTIC TRAINING AT SCHOOLS ADVOCATED (By Telegraph—Preae Association! ASHBURTON, This Day. A sweeping statement on the helplessness of the modern young woman in regard to her domestic ability, a plea for women police, condemnation of tha Japanese forces in the ruthless warfare in China and advocacy of a boycott on Japanese goods, were made this morning by the Dominion President of tha Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union at the interprovincial conference. The speaker, Mrs J. F. Drake of Berwick (Otago), stated that it should be compulsory for all girls to receive some training in domestic work before they left school and said that till domestic work was looked up to as an honourable duty and not looked down on as at present a dangerous position would be made worse. “The hospitals are full of people who should never have been sent there. They are ill because they have not been able to eat food properly cooked. Girls are getting married today and they know nothing about hovr to keep house, much less know anything about bringing up a family. A young man becomes engaged and sets about offering to his bride a nice home. On the other hand what has the girl to offer toward the bargain? Very often she is an indifferent cook and cannot look after the home and does not know the first thing about bringing up # family.”