FAMILY AFFAIRS

Te Ao Hou, March 1960, Page 62

FAMILY AFFAIRS As always, it is the home and the family life that depend most heavily upon us and a Maori woman's strength of character, her personality and her faults are usually reflected in her family, her home and its surroundings. Mrs Merimeri Penfold giving her address at the Young Leaders' Conference. She is infant mistress and secretary of the women's welfare league at Ratana Pa. (Photo: J. E. Farrelly.) It is difficult for the ordinary observer to gain a picture of Maori women and their home affairs against the background of this modern world. Social workers, welfare officers, district nurses and others have better opportunity to observe and compare than I have had. I am sure that in this matter as in most things we will always have diversity; there will always be some houses spotless and others dirty, some families bright and healthy and some ragged and neglected. This would apply to people in general and not particularly to Maoris. Also it is obvious that bad reports spread faster and further than good ones. In a timber milling village with modern housing throughout, no special mention was made of three Maori families whose homes and surroundings maintained a very high standard. However, a year or so later a fourth Maori family moved in. They belonged to the other extreme—their wild children overran the village and a heap of empties grew rapidly in their untidy back yard. Pakeha people in the village, some of them no better, were quick to remark on the “dirty Maori”, “What else can you expect…” We must of course work to raise these standards but we must expect that some will fall behind the rest and we should remember that this is true in other sections and other communities. The general standard would appear to compare very well and this fact is a credit to the modern Maori women that they cope so well in a domestic environment that is so far removed from that of the generation before. Home furnishing and upkeep, budgeting to make ends meet, managing the Family Benefit and the buying-on-instalment plans, caring for the children and keeping up with the ever-increasing complexity of modern life—all these are tasks that we take in our stride—or most of us do, anyhow. Probably the greatest achievement of Maori women is reflected in the steeply rising standards of health among our people. If at first you credit his great improvement to the developments of modern medicine and the extended medical services now available, you should remember that the application of these services and their ultimate success generally depends on the mothers. No longer are the doctor and the district nurse regarded as kehuas to be evaded. No longer do children jump out school windows to escape from having injections. Furthermore, I understand for the first time the Maori death rate was lower than the pakeha rate in New Zealand, Although this figure is greatly influenced by the extreme youth of the Maori people and considerable Maori health problems remain to be solved, it is a measure of the suc-

cess of Maori women in health and home and family matters.