MODERN MARRIAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22775, 8 July 1937, Page 11

MODERN MARRIAGE

ROYAL PHYSICIAN'S VIEWS FREER STATUS OF WOMEN LOXDO>T, June 2S The new relation, of women to the married state, as the result of their modern status in society, was the subject of a speech by the "Royal physician. Lord Dawson of Penn, in the House of Lords. The House was discussing the divorce law amendment bill introduced in the House of Commons by Mr. A. P. Herbert. At the close of the debate the bill was read a second time without a division.

The bill extends the grounds for divorce from misconduct to desertion for three years, or cruelty or insanity for five years. It provides that there can be no divorce within five years of marriage.

Lord Dawson said it must not be thought that an increase in divorce meant a corresponding increase in marriage failure. In the years preceding the Great War, men and women had had a freedom of companionship previously unknown and, with freedom and equality, came an increase of sex consciousness.

Women desired a sex-satisfving life. If they were deprived of it, there arose a. sense of discontent and failure. It followed that women did contribute more to marriage failures than in days when women bore a subordinate part.