Language defended

Press, 2 March 1982, Page 3

Language defended

PA Rotortia The member of Parliament for Eastern Maori (Mr P. W. Tapsell) said yesterday he accepted that he used what he called “intemperate language” when talking about lesbians and motherhood at a Labour Party regional conference in Hamilton on Sunday but did so to highlight a matter that concerned him. Mr Tapsell told the conference that the mother who chose to look after her family in the home was in

danger of belittlement in today’s society. “Often we are belittling her in favour of some barren lesbian,” he said. [ “Often we have had some bizarre woman — perhaps a barren lesbian — given greater publicity and prominence, and apparently greater, status, than the many thousands of women who are looking after their families in their homes,” he said. Young mothers, and particularly young Maori

mothers, should have a genuine choice. They should be able to stay, at home to look after their children and husbands if they wanted To. Instead, they had to go to work from sheer economic necessity, Mr Tapsell said. The resultant breakdown in family life was particularly noticeable in places such as Rotorua where there was a big Maori .population. “We should have the greatest respect for the mother with young children, but she is miserably disadvantaged,” he said.