DECLINE OF THE OLDFASHIONED HOME

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22137, 15 December 1933, Page 19

DECLINE OF THE OLDFASHIONED HOME

In the decline of home life sob writers find a perennial theme, and educationists a permanent problem: one deplores and the other accepts the fact that while. 50 years ago the home was for many not only a place to live, but also a centre for education, relaxation, and entertainment, to-day it has shrunk to a fraction of its former dimensions. Many and various are the reasons given for this decline, from the approach of the Day of Judgment to the decadence of the younger generation, but this article is not concerned with those, save in the most superficial way. What it is concerned with is the effect on present day families. It is now possible, except for a brief period, to spend all of one’s life outside the home, in the old-fishioned sense. At the age of three, if one has enterprising parents, one may spend a large part of the day in a creche, where the kiddies learn to brush their teeth, button their clothes and shoes (and other’s too), play games and learn rhymes, and altogether have a fascinating time. Experiments have proved that children in these centres developed more quickly in almost every way than those brought up on an exclusive diet of mother love, so that at the school age these children are quite handy little people, ready to enter on school life with a readiness and competence lacking in children who, as is usual, especially in middle class houses, have been dressed, washed like dolls all their short lives, and also in many cases given an exaggerated idea of their own importance. Hence, the tears and calls for mummy with which every infant mistress is familiar in the first week. Many children go to boarding school at the age of 10, or even before, and when school education is complete, they many enter upon vocational training, enter a university, or begin to learn the trade or profession they have decided to pursue. It is not even necessary now for parents to worry over Bill’s inability to do mental arithmetic or Latin, and wonder what he can do to earn a living, because many schools are adopting voca-

tional tests, which let the parents know in what direction their child’s talents lie, and whether he will do better in market gardening than in engineering or law. When children grow up, they do not look for their entertainment in the home, but on playing fields, theatres, of kinemas, and lecture halls. Church going has declined, there is no doubt, but no one can pass through life with no religious training, for this has been taken over to a large extent by schools. Institutions have, in fact, usurped almost all the training which used to Delong exclusively to the home. Whether this is a good thing or not cannot be decided just yet. For that we must wait until the generations which have grown up under this modern method have proved their worth in the world. Some results are evident, however. No one can, I think, deny that modern children are more confident and capable at an earlier age than used to be the case. The mollycoddle is rarer, for mothers of families have usually outside interests, and in a growing number of cases, a profession, to take up their attention. Sentimentalists argue that this is a state of affairs to bo deplored, but when one considers the pathetic results of too much concentration on the child it seems to mo a decided advance. It must be remembered, too, that families arc not so large as they used to be, and that many children would have no substitute for the healthy though sometimes hard rough and tumble of family life were it not for schools, creches, and other institutions which train the child in team work, and see to it that selfishness and malice, excused as nerves and temperament by fond mothers, docs not go unpunished. A sheltered home life is nowadays no preparation for earning one’s living, as most people must do, and the sooner the individual learns how to meet the common situations of life the better for him, and all .who have anything to do with him.

It has been argued that the present system of education and social life crushes individuality. This can never be true if the child has any individuality worth preserving. And it is a charge which can be levelled with much more truth at the senu-patriarchal family life, where parents have both the opportunity and often the wish, conscious or unconscious, to repress individuality which threatens to disturb their plan of living. Games between schools, towns or nations, and the gathering together of people in concert hall or theatre, may be an expression of the herd instinct, but it is a higher and more socially useful expression of it than the cave man with his family gnawing the communal bone in their self-contained cavern.

“ For the good of the family ” was the slogan of the past. “ For the good of society ” is the cry of to-day, and as the social system changes the home must change too. To-day is a transition stage, and as always happens then, the worst faults of the age appear more glaring than they are.

Let us hope that the old brigade who persistently show the home and present, day social life in opposition will live to see the home co-operating with the new order. —Glasgow Weekly Herald.