LUCKY DAUGHTERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 132, 25 August 1927, Page 5

LUCKY DAUGHTERS

Someone remarked recently in my hearing that modern mothers were not fair to their daughters; and proceeded to cite those exceptional cases where mamma is too busy exploiting her own personality to give her daughter a chance. That such types are the exception is obvious enough to anyone who knows the average modern family menage, where a new-young mother holds . the reins. Never have growing girls had such a wonderful time—nor such lavishly sympathetic comprehension. There were heaps of splendid mothers in the old days, from the point of view of nursery care and family menus. Mothers who kept watch, with lynx eye, over the i airing of the family wash, and who saw to it that Maisie changed her footwear immediately she came in from a walk in rainy weather. But it is the modern mother who adds to these more homely virtues a host of sovereign qualities that make the modern daughter’s lot an enviable one. Your truly typical new-style mamma is no fly-by-night creature who commandeers her daughter’s dancing partner and takes the wind out of adolescent sails. Nor does she stand aside and cast a gloom over youthful pleasures; nor preach endless homilies. She has hurled down all those barriers that once made it impossible for a young girl to go to her maternal parent with her difficulties, her problems, and her self-questionings. Sufficiently “in the swim” to be au courant with modern social ethics and conditions, she can have a good time herself without encroaching on mademoiselle’s preserves, and is so near to her daughter, thanks to her own new-young activities, that she can guide her without preaching, and with such subtlety that the young woman is unaware of the enveloping influence. She is not only a guide, philosoi pher, and friend, she is a wonderful hostess who can adapt herself to all sorts of people, the young and the not-so-young. She can be the life and soul of the party—without making it aggressively apparent—when the company is a little “difficile” and some of them are born “mixers.” She can make good the occasional lack of social savoir faire that even clever little daughters occasionally manifest when it comes to entertaining a heterogeneous group. There is another aspect, too, of the modern mother and daughter relationship, of which not every girl is conspicuously appreciative. And that is the earning capacity of so many modern mammas. There are growing numbers of lucky daughters who owe the “frills” of life and the gratifications of adolescent appetites to the generous elasticity of the maternal purse. This may not be, in older eyes, the most valuable part of their inheritance. but the modern mother knows well how much it helps to solve certain problems which, whether we like it or not, are indubitably contingent on cash. The girl who can entertain her chum at home, gladly and proudly, has an asset too obvious for comment. She is one of the lucky daughters whose path is made smooth by a modern mother.