Great Responsibility

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 110, 1 August 1941, Page 5

Great Responsibility

HERE is one big and outstanding fact about our civilised arrangements which creates many problems for girls and women. It is this, Girls become, in some respects at any rate, mature long before it is socially possible for them to marry and to become mothers. Most of our girls of course manage to pass through the time of adolescence successfully, but many do not and we ought honestly to face the fact that many undesirable forms of conduct and much delinquency among girls arises in this way. I have taught in a Girls’ Borstal Institute and I know. We are more honest and open about these things than we used to be, but still not honest enough. The physical education of girls in this fundamental respect is still too often ignored. The average adolescent is naturally inquiring and ignorance only too often leads to a morbid brooding. Here the older generation of women and mothers in particular have a great responsibility. Mothers of girls often complain of antagonism displayed by their daughters and they are often puzzled and hurt by it. Often enough the mothets are themselves to blame for it, for they have not realised that their daughters are children no longer. The most important step which the older generation should make in their treatment of the younger generation at adolescence is the entry into full and equal companionship with them, How many mothers do this with their daughters? She should gtadually be treated as an equal who is to play a part as an equal in the common work of civilised life-(" Physical Education for Women," Mrs. I, L. G. Sutherland, 3Y A, July 7.)