MOTHERS IN FASHION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19218, 6 January 1926, Page 5

MOTHERS IN FASHION.

Is it possible that the reaction which wo are being assured on all sides has set in on the other side of the world against the after-war independence of the young is being felt in Australia ? (asks an Australian writer). It sounds almost too astonishing to be true, yet thore are indisputable signs of it. Within the last few weeks announcements have been made of the approaching departure for England of several Victorias girls, and their mothers. "I wish my girl had finished school two years ago, for then she could have gone alone," at least two of tho mothers were heard to say when questioned as to why the 20-year-old girl of to-day could not go alone as the girl did who was 20 two or three years ago. It was explained by the parents that travelling alone was one of the things that no girl under 28 could do nowadays. Mothers aro jn fashion again, it would seem, # for "I hate to go out without mother" is just as often heard to-day as were the assertions of complete independence a few years back. Lady Burnharn, who was a delegate to the recent Imperial Press Conference, said that the spirit of uncon* trolled independence which was a feature of girlhood during the war, was waning in England. . Since then another wellknown woman has said the same thing, and they are, both of them, women who go to the root of things. While they both expressed admiration for what the "wa» girls" did, they said that in England the reaction was felt not so much by those' armed with what used to be called ''oarental authority" as by the young girls themselves. They now realise that there is much more sympatliv. and pleasure to bn gained by assuming the attitudeof daughters in the home than by resentine that domestic-interest which th® impetuosity of vouth has, since the war, usually regarded as interference. Of course, the artificiality of the mid-Vic-torian atmosphere, when "Mamma" was often an autocrat whose word was law with or without reason, has been swept away by common sense, and most women have now acquired a broad and enlightened viewpoint. Perhaps that is why young girls are becoming once moro amenable to reason, and why mothers aro again "in fashion."