THE FAMILY ROMANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19959, 30 May 1928, Page 7

THE FAMILY ROMANCE.

DAUGHTERS AND FATHERS. "All that I am and everything I have achieved, I owe to my mother." Great men have been saying that for centuries. If. the best men would do as much for their daughters as the best mothers do for their sons, many a woman would say to interviewer or biographer: "Give my father full credit for my accomplishments. He started me on my way." For a clever man's training of his daughter from the time shs cuddles her baby head bn his shoulder to the day sho marries or goes out into tho world to make a career, there is no substitute, states an English writer. When you hear a starry-eyed little creature announce, "My daddy is my sweetheart and I am going to many him when I grow up" you are witnessing scene 1 of act 1 of that drama the psychologists .have named "the family romance." When this romance is played out normally a daughter worships her father and identifies herself with her mother. And in the playing of it she undergoes a dual development. While she is acquiring the gentle graces and charms of a woman, she feels the bracing influence of her tether's fine presence and his thought. The very difference of sex is stimulating to her. Sho feels like a young sweetheart in this, that she is at particular pains to please her father and to win his praise. While she is under the quasi-romanf ic influence—every girl who deeply loves her father feels it—be can do three important things for her if he is a person of discernment.

Ho can interpret, a man's viewpoint to her. Ho can the better prepare her for a happy marriage. And he can furnish her with a background for a successful career. A girl whose father overlooks her or neglects her must wait until, through association with other men, she can make acquaintance with the male viewpoint. Without a father's help she is as heavily handicapped as a boy who has no mother, and perhaps no sister from whom he can learn something of how women feel and think. >

A girl who grows up happily with her father, unless she becomes unduly fixed on him, bestowes her heart on another man easily and naturally. When she marries she merges her life into that of her husband; for she takes him, not in the old-maidish mood that "it would be nice to be married," but with a full sensa of her wifttly privilege and with a ready acceptance of all of the obligations that- marriage entails. Most fathers, absorbed as they are in business or their professions, leave the rearing of their daughters to the feminine side of the house. If they reserve a margin of leisure for their children the major portion of it goes to the boys. This is not because most fathers are partial to their male children, but for the simple reason that ,jt is much easier for them to understand.their boys. Hoping that be may pass on to his son the fruits of his own experience, father arranges that he and the boy shall ride or play golf or swim together. And it is while they are playing that the father tries to give his son his conception of the world and his philosophy of life. And all the while his daughter probably needs him as much an his eon. Never does a girl lose the things a clever father teaches her. The background and the sophistication with which only a man's wisdom and companionship: can furnish a young girl is a priceless; heritage. And it is one that will serve? her as a woman long after sh© has trans*ferred her daughterly affection to a lover and husband. <