Most Meetings In Public Places

Te Ao Hou, September 1964, Page 17

Most Meetings In Public Places In answer to the first of these questions I found that there were many opportunities in the city for young people to come together, but there were two factors which made this less effective than it might have been. The first was that in most cases these meetings were in public places—dance halls, cinemas, and so on —while most of the married couples I talked with had met through introductions by friends and family. The second was that there was a section fo the Pakeha community which had little contact with Maoris at all. These were mostly people in the better sorts of jobs living in high-priced housing areas where few Maoris could afford to live. Of course these people did see and hear of Maoris but in most cases when they saw them it was as road menders, and usually when they heard of them it was to do with court cases in the paper. They therefore, very understandably, had a rather unbalanced idea of what Maoris are really like and were not usually prepared to make the effort to remedy this. Of course there were exceptions. There were many mixed couples who did get to know each other and who started dating. In nearly all cases this was accepted by their friends, but in many (both Maori and Pakeha) their parents were not entirely happy about the arrangement. In a lot of cases parental objections did not start until the dating became steady (it was then that parents began to think of marriage as a possibility), but in nearly every case once the marriage had taken place the parents on both sides accepted the situation and usually grew fond of their Pakeha or Maori son- or daughter-in-law.