BABIES AND BUSINESS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4510, 3 January 1923, Page 2

BABIES AND BUSINESS.

A vigorous reply has been made by <3 Miss Sybil Thorndike (Mrs Lewis ; J Casson), the great tragedienne, to the ~ i contention that wives and mothers t cannot have an independent career in. ' . life. Writing in John o’ London's Weekly, she says : “Some people seem t to imagine that motherhood consists' q of bearing, feeding, and washing ’ babies. Others may go as far as to see the necessity for sympathetic influence over them ; but few men seem to realise the necessity (or, at any rate, the benefit) of a mother’s stimu- - • lating influence. The mother whose- c life is confined to the home has only an indirect and second-hand touch with life. In the modern household, j where everything is bought, and no-.' - , thing created, she is driven to become a vegetable, and to depend for any outside life on association ■with _ I other women in a similar condition. I ; deny most strenuously that this is necessarily the best life for a mother who really loves her children. The mother with a real work in the world outside, her home •is a much more vital stimulating influence that the mere home-keeper. I do not find, from my own experience, that the actual absence that outside work entails reduces that influence, if there is real sympathy and deep intimacy between mother and children. Nor have I eve>* come across any real mother, however important Her career, who grudged the time the children took UP either a,t their birth or later. In my own experience, except in times of. IB actual financial difficulty, I have never found motherhood and work in antagonism to each other. They have, J® always seemed complementary, an-i ag the times of enforced rest from work that babies must mean have proved -S stimulating to my work when I took it up again. J myself believe thatwe are much mbre .the slaves' of' character than of circumstances. I lieve that those who are born good mothers will be good mothers if they Jkj are brpuhgt up as free women. And that those who are bo(rn ambitious, Sg successful business women, if they are ‘S| brought up free, will make success-. Ful careers. And that those who are, born both will be both if they Wave £3 sufficient vitality. And that if they. are born healthy and brought up they will have that vitality if they, desire.” ■. ‘ '■'‘aH