THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, October 17, 1940. PARENTS AND THE FUTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24431, 17 October 1940, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, October 17, 1940. PARENTS AND THE FUTURE

It is in no sense a reproach to the Plunket Society that Dr Hercus was able to demonstrate, in his address to the Dunedin branch of this organisation yesterday, that its work is being counteracted by the decline in the New, Zealand birthrate. The statistics which he put forward to illustrate a development of the most grave significance to the future of our country—indeed, of Western civilisation —indicate clearly that the most elaborate system for assuring the survival of the babies must be defeated if the birth-rate falls. How drastic the decline must become in New Zealand was strikingly exemplified by reference away from the crude population rate, which . reveals a position serious enough, to the figures relating to the number of New Zealand women within the child-bearing period. These, as Dr Hercus said, are the only people who really count in such a survey, and there is evidence that their number must decline steeply in the years ahead. • With fewer potential mothers in the next generation, a higher birth-rate is required in order even to maintain the present population statistics. Quite obviously, however, as ajl recent statistical surveys have shown, there is no promise that the present mean birth-rate will not continue to decline. From having a stationary population, New Zealand is fated, unless some prompt remedy is found, to proceed downhill in a catastrophic decline of the birthrate which will disturb the whole social and economic structure. The wastage of war must hasten this process. Immigration, in the opinion of Dr Hercus, cannot be relied upon to arrest it, since the population of Great Britain is also declining and there is little disposition on the part of British people to migrate. The remedy, slow but effective, is to promote larger families —families of four or five children instead of families of one or two. The economic changes necessary to procure this desideratum have been widely debated, and no doubt the State will increasingly play its part in making parenthood easy. The suggestion that measures should be adopted to improve the status of the domestic worker, thus relieving the problems of ,the over-worked mother, merits attention. But there is also another, higher appeal which must be impressed upon the community—that of the spiritual satisfaction to be derived from parenthood. This is a selfish age. Yet it is also an age in which, as the present conflict has demonstrated, people recognise a high responsibility and loyalty towards their country. It should be possible, if this whole problem is fairly put before the people of New Zealand, to show them that their national pride, their love of race, cannot assure the survival of their kind, unless they will seek that rich joy in parenthood which was discovered by older generations.