LADY ASTOR ON LOVE

Shannon News, 7 December 1926, Page 1

LADY ASTOR ON LOVE

HOME LIFE SECRETS OF A WOMAN M.P. Lady Astor sat in the midst of twenty-five American reporters the other day and defined love »as she knows it as a mother of six children and as a politician. * "There is mother love and there is smother love," she started off, in reply to the first of hundreds of questions fired at her. "The latter," she said, according' to the New York "Evening World's" version of the interview, "is what says, 'I want everything for my own children, and I don't care whether those of other people get anything at all." But mother love declares, 'I love all children, and I want them all to have the best possible chance.' "Conditions for children have improved enormously in England since women had the vote. Men are so much more respectful to them." Then Lady [Astor spoke.of the other side of mothering—the private not the public kind. She said she did not blame modern young people for anything they did —she blamed their parents. Parental control should commence in the cradle. "I know what I am talking about for I have six extremely vital children one one of whom would be out of hand to-morrow if I would allow it. You have to keep after children every minute, physically and spiritually. Children are a whole-time job. This is a subject on which I feel very strongly. One thing which I have observed during my present visit is that there are spoiled children in' America than in England. "I hav e said I do not like to see young children working. But almost any sort of work for children is better than letting them grow up with the idea that there is no work in' th-? world for them to do. I want mi children to choos e careers which are individually suited to them, but 1 want all of them to live up to the ideal of service to others." Jazz and make-up for the young do not meet with Lady , Astor's approval. "Isn't it ridiculous," she exclaimed, "the way SJtme of those young girls paint up their faces. If that's the sort of thing they want to do I suppose they'll do it like the people in the last day of Pompeii. Now,' if-1 wanted to paint my old face" (she made a charming grimace) "it would b e another matter. But It's' not for young girls to do." As for jazz, she said, the negro was a spiritual singer; you liave taken his spiritual songs and put all your own wickedness into them and called them jazz. Lady Astor was asked if a woman, could be a proper mother of children and at the same time hold another job, "It can be done," she replied. "But it means giving up everything else. I never leave my children during their holidays—that's why I do so much less speaking than most of the members of the House of Commons. When they are at home -I get up every morning and have my breakfast with them and get them started right. I do nothing in society—not that I ever cared about it, anyway. I don't even go to a movie."