FAMILY LIFE IN BRITAIN

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1689, 21 November 1925, Page 6

FAMILY LIFE IN BRITAIN

ITS DISAPPEARANCE DEPLORED. Every boy and every gal That's born into this world alive Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative. So wrote W. S. Gilbert, long before the advent of the Labour Party. In those safe and sound Victorian days when the family was an institution, one's destiny was far more likely to run on predestined lines than seems to be the case nowadays—that is, if speakers at the British Association Conference at Southampton have read the signs of the times aright, jtt is surprising how many of them deplore, if not the decay of the family, at least the delegation of its duties to others than the parents of the modern child. Not only, apparently, are a baby's politics no longer defined for him at birth, but he is subjected to all sorts of outside influences as soon as he (or she) is out of swaddling clothes. Mrs Stocks, a London sociologist, condemned theoretical economists for the inadequate attention they had paid to the problem of the family and its place in the economic structure. Having obviously in mind the dictum that a boy's best friend is his mother, she exclaimed, "You must remember that the activities of women —-the individualised, unspecialised services of the home—which tend to comprise that part of human activity which eludes measurement by the economists." Instead of enlarging on this promising text, she branched into academics. She was followed by Mr P. S. Florence, who thought it would be better for the wife to get the bulk of the wage, while the husband merely received a .tip. Mrs Minnard Arnold thought that the family allowance should be given to the wife in recognition of her services.

Not until Dr. W. H. D. Rouse, headmaster of Perse School, Cambridge, rose to speak, was the family pilloried in all its present-day decadence. After he had reviewed boarding schools and day schools as instruments for the training of youth, he went on: "Everything in the last resort depends upon the home. In Queen Victoria's reign there was strict discipline there and everybody was the better for it, including the wife. Mothers really looked after their children, and, in those days, there were several of them —enough to knock off each other's corners. A good nurse taught them how to behave at table, and their mother read the Bible to them aloud. With a strict father, a good mother and a competent nurse, the boys came to school having a background of religious practice, of good general knowledge, and used to discipline. "What is left of this Victorian home?" the speaker continued. "Very little. As a rule, the father has abdicated to his wife, who is neither strong nor wise enough to secure strict discipline. The consequence is that the boy is left to decide for himself what should be decided for him. The father leaves decisions to the boy, and the schoolmaster has to do the father's part.. Sometimes the schoolmaster has to give way because he cannot help the boy going out in the evening if his father allows it, and cannot prevent him smoking if his mother gives him cigarettes. The good old 'Nanny' (nurse) has disappeared, and the boy knows little or nothing of the Bible." Dr. Rouse was not bold enough to probe the modern girl's knowledge of the Bible; or to say anything about her .cigarette proclivities. Perhaps he was aware that his audience knew quite as much as he did about Miss 1925.

"There can be no home," continued Dr. Rouse, "where the parents fly off in a car every week-end, and where too often the boy has a motorcycle which he rides at forty miles an hour. We have to supply the steadying influence and check the indulgences. The school has now to do what was once done in the home."

Dr. Rouse concluded by saying that school training should be 'the same as a good home could give, and that it amounted to what might be briefly called "the gentleman's code of honour."