AUSTRALIA'S MORALS'

Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 12881, 13 May 1913, Page 7

AUSTRALIA'S MORALS'

DOCTOR'S SCATHING REMARKS

PARENTS THEMSELVES CAN'T BE TRUSTED.

MELBOURNE, May 3

Dr Harvey Sutton, one of the official medical examineors for the Education Department, delivered a remarkable denunciation of the morals of Australian parents at the Surrey Hall, Surrey Hills.

Emphasising the moral and social dangers involved in late marriages, he pointed out that Victoria is by no meams immune in this a^espect. seeing that the average age of marriage among the professional classes is as high £13 31 i, while the working classes usually marry at about <£7£.

Passing on to the question of instruc-. ting children in sex physiology, Dr Sutton, whowas an old-time athlete and Rhodes Scholar, said that the proportion of illegitimate children born ; in the Commonwealth was one ira ten. This was serious enough, but a still more alarming fact was .that about one fe six of these was the result of infraction of the marriage code, and that one half of the first births, both legitimate and illegitimate, were due to antenuptial intimacy.

It was, he said, highly dangerous to assume that instruction in these important social, questions should be left in the hands of the parents, seeing that the general standard' of sex mortality among the parents-themselves had; been so low. ;