OUR GIRLS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 23, 31 May 1913, Page 4

OUR GIRLS.

Wellington's "Evening Poet," writing on the problem "What to do with the Girls," says: Much more than "the boy is father to the man," the girl's destiny is to be mother to the man. It is a trueism that good fatherhood is important to the nation, but good motherhood is much more important. The mothers shape the race. The mother's responsibility does not rest with the intimate care of the children ; she has an eye for the father, too, and if he is lax she strives to amend him for the children's sake. That is the material instinct, so splendidly shining through all history. Unhappily, various factors in modern times are operating against the proper working of that instinct. The general [ conditions of life in cities and towns] in New Zealand are not ideal for the production of the motherly type. The home circle is tending to have a large circumference with a small centre—the radiation from the centre, the homelessness of the home—is one of the great modern problems of a society which is founded on the homes of the married. The average girl is not maturing with the knoAvledge necessary for happy housekeeping and the proper care of the children. This fact is becoming more and more apparent. What is the remedy P Most of the parents in this country of the eight-hour day (not so many as eight in all cases) have time to train their daughters as well as their sons i:i essential things of social citizenship, but many thousand's are neglectful. It seems therefore to be another call for "State Aid." As so many individuals of society disregard their duty to the community, then society collectively—the State— has to do something for self-protection or self-pre-servation. HenCe it is good to have news of the Education Board's decision to convene a conference, at the suggestion of the Society for. the Protection, of Women and Children, on the subject of instruction in the theory and practice of domestic science. The first care of delegates should be-.to recognise certain facts of life, ' which The Post has frequently e-mphasised. These are briefly:—(l) The increasing indifference of parents to the fact that the average girl marries; (2) the average girl' takes some kind of nondomestic employment alter Jeaving school; (3) most of the girls earning wages at non-domestic tasks do not trouble to fit themselves for the management of a home.