Family Casualties
HE fact that we print the article on orphanages which "appears on Page 10 of this issue does not mean that we agree with everything in it. Itmeans that .we accept the, duty of opening up the subject for public discussion. Our knowledge of such places is not wide enough or intimate enough to permit us to be dogmatic on any issue but one, namely, that the best institution is a poor substitute for a good: home. Our contributor of course agrees with this and emphasises it; but she believes that the gulf between home and institution can be narrowed, and that it’ should never have been so wide and bleak. One of the obstacles to reform is the fact that all orphanages begin in pity: because the
worst of them was an expression of Christian charity in the first place, it is difficult to criticisé any of them without hurting the unselfish men and womén who subsequently carry them on. But every reform hurts somebody. Every complaint is a complaint against somebody, and if we are doing less than the best we should be doing for the children themselves we must all share the responsibility and not use the feel-. ings of a few good people as an excuse for shirking our duty. It will surprise many of us, to begin with, to discover that-so large a proportion of the inmates of orphafnages are not orphans at all. It should. disturb us, if it is true, that. brothers and sisjers are not noffhally réared as brothers and Sisters, but separated through "fear of sex complications" and brought up as strangers. The fact that there are here and there institutions which almost are homes in the best sense emphasises the bleakness of the others, and our contributor suggests that size alone is one of the obstacles to happier conditions in the larger places. Whether she is right or wrong in this matter, or practical or impractical in her approach to: the problem as a whole, it is a pliblic service to provoke us all into thinking about it from a new angle.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 478, 20 August 1948, Page 5
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354Family Casualties New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 478, 20 August 1948, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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