“Changed Role Of Father In Modern Family"

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 7

“Changed Role Of Father In Modern Family"

Preparing a child to become an acceptable member of society was one of the principal tasks of die family today, said Dr. J. Small, a senior lecturer in education at the University of Canterbury, addressing an audience of fathers on Tuesday night. His talk was the first of three in a course for fathers held by the Canterbury Play Centre Association, and sponsored by the department of extension studies of the University of Canterbury.

Speaking on the subject of "The Father, Family, and Society” Dr Small said that relationships within the family were becoming more and more crucial. Families were smaller, more mobile, and seemingly more rootless. There was a smaller number of common activities for the family to share together; more and more activities were to be found outside the home. But above all, the family of today was subjected to considerable outside influences and pressures. Because of the smaller core of family activities, each interaction among its members was more important If things went well for the modern family they could go very well, but if they went wrong they could go radically wrong, and perhaps beyond repair, he said. Dr. Small said that unless communication within the family was free and open, danger signals might not be evident.

Today the role of the father as the director of the family must necessarily be reduced, although not completely so. The father, said Dr. Small, had to take much more account of happenings in the family. To adapt htaself to this new

role, the modern father had a most difficult task, he said. In helping a child to became an acceptable member of society, the family had to interpret what it considered were the norms of society tn be passed on to the child. The tendency of some parents to attempt to influence a child’s attitudes and behaviour could set up antagonisms which became evident later. Children had a way of discerning things for themselves. There was such a thing as a parent trying too hard too soon, he said. Dr. Small, to a suggestion that perhaps the mother had usurped the father’s role in the family, said he did not think this was true. Neither did he feel that the family had weakened because the father was no longer the authoritarian figure of the past. Dr. Small said he would ask not that the mother take over the husband's role, but that both take on a genuine partnership.