PARENTS BAD ?

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 235, 4 October 1928, Page 7

PARENTS BAD ?

INFLUENCE ON YOUNG

'Deprives Them Of Originality,' Says Englishman. CONTROVERSY STARTED. (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) (Received 1 p.m.) LONDON, October i. Considerable interest is taken in the declaration of the Hon. Mrs. Bertrand Russell, in the course of a debate with Mrs. Cecil Chesterton, that children should be removed from parental control, because parents exercise a bad influence, depriving the children of originality. Mrs. Russell maintained that children in their early years should learn independence, under the supervision of qualified persons. She had sent her own two children to a nursery school, from which they returned and said they wanted to live there always. Mrs. Chesterton viewed institutionalism with horror, pictured children so standardised as to be hardly distinguishable from one another, and urged that the majority of women still wanted husbands and children. Dame Hudson Lyall, chairman of the Mothers' Union, in an interview, said: "The day that England abolishes home will be' the deathknell of her future. It is a preposterous suggestion." Viscountess Erleigh, of the "Baby Week" organisation, said a mother invariably understands her child better than anyone else.