OUR BABIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16331, 21 January 1921, Page 9

OUR BABIES.

(By “ HYGENJA.”) Published under tho auspice* of the Royal Now Zealand Society for tha Health of "Women and Children. *• It is wiser to put up a fence at tha top of a precipice than V> maintain an ambulance at tha bottom-'' BOOKS ON BABIES. How wonderfully sane and sensible was the advice on infancy given by Florence Nightingale sixty years ago in her " Notes on Nursing.’ She summarised the main essentials which must be attended to by the mother or nurse as follows: MINDING THE BABY. 1. Fresh air. 2. Proper warmth. 3. Cleanliness for its little body, its clothes, its bed, its room and house-. 4. Feeding it with proper food, at regular times. 5. Not startling it or shaking either its little body or its little nerves. 6. Light and cheerfulness. 7. Proper clothes in bed and up. And management in .all these things. If Florence Nightingale had included in her list the stimulus of Outing and Exercise, the need for proper Rest and vSleep, and the need of Regularity in regard to all habits, she would have drawn attention to all the main factors l'or normal growth and development and for the prevention of disease and death in early childhood. However, one wonders, not at her omissions, but that she should have expressed so clearly and sensibly sixtyyears ago wliat no one summed up equally well throughout the Victoria era. Printed advice on the care of children was extremely scanty until quite recently. As Mr F. D. How says in bi? changing little Book of the Child,” published fourteen yeais ago. “Not only was literature on children extremely scanty, but those people . who ■did, frdm tr ie to time, write on the subject seemed to have been ashamed, of doing so,, and their wdrks„ appearing one© or twice in a century, are for the most port anonymous.” In spit© of this, Air How- unearthed a very quaint and helpful Idle treatise which had been issued by the printer to the University of Cambridge in the year 1616, under the title “ THE OFFICE OF CHRISTIAN PARENTS” This little book, pifintod over -TOO yea.'S ago, set out to show “ How chiluiwii are to be governed throughout all

ages and times of their life.” and contained. "a. brief a dmoniiorie odd it ion unto children to answer in dutie to their parents office ” PERSONAL CARE BY THE MOTHER. te The parent is put in trust to govern© the cbiefest creature unde** Heaven, to train that which is called the generation of God.” This old writer of 1616 made a strong point of the child being cared lor by the pa.re.nts from birth onwards. As Mr How says lie did not even approve of the interference of the grandmother. INTERFERENCE OF THE GR ANDMOTHER . ' n some places there comes in the child-wives mother. She will not have her daughter t roubled with the nursing ; and the father cannot abide the crying of the child ; therefore a nurse is sent haste-”—a course of actiou of which he entirely disapproves. When tho child is a little older he fttdl thinks that its committal to the of a servant should he avoided. " When a child begtnneth to know ins mother Irom another, there groweth two absurdities, either tho mother’s fondness maketh it a crying child and restless, or else her careless committing it to a servant spills it.” DISCIPLINING THE CHILD. The old writer held strong views as to the need for firmness, but he was opposed to the great severity common at the time. He says,,:— Here cometh in the cockling of the parents to give the child the sway of his qwne desires to have whatsoever it pointeth to, and so it maketh the parents and all the house slaves, and there is no end of noyse, of crying, and vvraling; or els there is such severitie as the heart of tho child i 3 utterly broken. . . . "When parents do either too much cockle their children, or by home example do draw them to worse things, or els neglect the due discipline and good order, what I pray you can come to passe? but as we see in trees which hoeing neglected at the first are .eroded and unfruitful; contrarv, they which by the hand and art of the husbandman are proined, stayed up, and watered, are mado upright, iaire. and fruitful!.” He insists that the pareufc is the proper person to bring up a child, saying:—‘‘‘The eggs arte badly hatched when the bird is away’; and the children are unluckily nurtured, whose parents arc made cureless, being absent through pleasure.” TH E MIR ACL E A N D R ESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTHOOD. Stephen Paget, the gifted London surgeon, whose contributions to the thought and literature of our time are always arresting, emphasises the sacred Duty of Parents to offspring as follows. in ii The New Parents’ Assistant.” ” Of the countless miracles which we take for granted, this surety is the most bewildering, that we have children. Neither science nor religion can measure this wonder of wonders. . . But to be a parent is to incur grave- responsibilities. “ The problem presents itself to me thus. We two, man and wife, who are the efficient cause of our children’s being, are thereby the sole agents not only of their joy and happiness, but of every false step they take, every pain they suffer. . . . But for us they would not have been here at all. We have called not animals but spirits from the vasty deep, and they canto when we did call for them : by which act we are tho cause of all their distresses.” ,