WOMEN GRADUATES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22963, 15 February 1938, Page 3

WOMEN GRADUATES

A DOCTOR'S CRITICISM "NO MATERNAL INSTINCTS" A statement by a prominent Australian doctor that university training "seems to rob a woman of her maternal instincts " has aroused much comment in the Comomnwealth, and Dr. Grace Cuthbert, director of Maternal and Baby Welfare, has been defending university women graduates against this criticism. As mothers, she says, she has .found them anxious to give their children their very best, and she has seen countless successful, happy and efficient homes run by university women. And why not? asks an Australian writer. These young women do not expect to learn home-making, cooking, etc., at the university, but the very fact that they seek a university training shows they are endowed with intelligence, and the intelligent girl is quick to absorb home training from her mother. The higher a woman's intelligence, the better fitted she, ought to be lor the management of a home and for motherhood. The reverse would be a contradiction of the ordinary rules of life and conduct. One speaks of the average university girl. Of course, there are those who desire to carve out a professional career for themselves, but even in a majority of these cases it would probably be correct to say that the impelling motive is the uncertainty of marriage. Most of them become teachers. Of the university women graduates in Australia 38 per cent are engaged in the teaching profession. That this should be the case shows they are interested in children, and that so many of them are constantly giving up the training of children in the schools in order to get married and bring up children in their own homes is proof of the maternal instinct in them. Dame Enid Lyons, the wife of the Prime Minister, was a teacher who gave up the school for the home, and she says that motherhood is the happiest career for women, and that it is a " full-time job." And yet, with all her 11 eleven children, Dame Enid finds time to devote to many outside interests.

While the family should be the chief interest of every married woman, it is wonderful what a lot of valuable public service can be rendered by the mothers of the nation. And the higher their education, the more valuable should bo their service, both in the home and outside it.