HOME LIFE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 127, 27 February 1928, Page 10

HOME LIFE

Sir, —There was a time, in my young days, when the only competition the home had was a penny reading or a mutual improvement society. In those days children looked to the home to furnish most of their comforts, entertainment. and happiness, but to-day competition with our homes is more than keen. With the "pictures," theatres, cabarets, scouts, and guides, and clubs of all kinds, the young people of to-day find it very hard to spend any of their time at home excepting Jo eat and sleep. The majority of pursuits are harmless pastimes, but are sufficiently entertaining to draw the people away from the home. Tlie New Zealand home, of to-day lias the gramophone, player piano, vacuum sweeper, wireless, etc., but the home influence is lacking. Call any evening, and if you find anyone at all at home, it will be “the old man”—even mother will be out with the girls.

Whilst in the past the ideal of . manhood was thrift, to-day it is considered smart for our young people to be extravagant. Old people are no longer honoured in the home; they are firmly told that they are “back numbers." The question of home influence is not only a serious, problem, but .in my opinion is one of the most serious of New Zealand’s many problems. New Zealand is pleasure mad. We seem to be crowding, pushing, jolting, in one mad debauch of pleasure. Where is it going tn stop? Passing laws of the “Thou shall not” type is a waste of. time, and apparently it is no use looking to the ehnrehes for hedp, they have lamentably failed to get past their own internal troubles. The mad onrush continues, and like Nero of old. we are fiddling on whilst New Zealand home life is burning out. and our crop of young failures in the courts is increasing.

It will take an abler pen than mine to devise a rewind''. —I am. etc.. ANGUS MACPHERSON. Wellington, Februaiy 23.