SCIENCE AND FAMILY LOVE

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 11, Issue 9, 1 August 1945, Page 2

SCIENCE AND FAMILY LOVE

In terms of human values, the advocates of the up-to-date institution are subordinating the motherchild relationship to' efficiency, writes the Church of England newspaper concerning a controversy on the respective merits of scientifically equipped institutions as the better method of rearing children. 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 ill-equipped scientifically. ■ They have little knowledge of dietetics, of psychology, 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 homes 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. . The controversy is significant for two things — the serious decline which has ready taken place m the evaluation of the family; and the serious advance which has been made by the idea of regimentation. How are you to get children into these up-to-date institutions if parents refuse to give consent — 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 but 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.