Science and Family Love.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 36, Issue 1, 1 April 1945, Page 2

Science and Family Love.

"Greateft Basrion of Our Free-

dom"

A prolonged correspondence has been raging m The Times about the respective merits of scientifically equipped institutions ad family life as the better method of rearing children. . That such a question can be asked at all is an indication of the distance the modern world has travelled from Christian values. In terms of human values, the advocates of the up-to-date institution are subordinating thd mother-child relationship to efficiency. And m the final analysis, the supremacy of efficiency as a social ideal means the degrading of personality from an end to a means. It is quite certain that the vast majority of mothers are illequipped scientifically. They have little knowledge of dietetics, of psycholpgy, of child training. It is also certain that the Vast majority of even the best-equipped child institutions would be deficient m love for the children, m such love as a mother, has for her own child. The best scientific care and rearing is no substitute for family love. By all means let girls be trained m mothercraft. By all means, also, let us provide institutions for children as exceptions — where their homed are utterly impossible. But there can surely be no doubt whatever m the mind of anyone claiming to be Christian on this issue. Children should be reared by their parents and by nobody else. This Tini^s correspondence is significant for two things— the serious decline which has already taken place m the evaluation of the family, and the serious abeyance which has been made by the idea of regimentation. ' flow are you to get children into these up-to-date institutions it parents refuse to giveconsentn-as every decent parent would? Only by giving the State power to compel. Once we begin to argue about this question we have entered upon the road which terminates m totalitarianism. From a decision that institutions are superior to homes it would be a step to the subordination Of the parent to a bureaucracy. In safeguarding the family we are protecting personality. Supremacy of family life, m spite of all its scientific imperfections, is the greatest bastion of our freedom. — C of S. Newspaper