TRUTH—OR CONSEQUENCES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 622, 1 June 1951, Page 16

TRUTH—OR CONSEQUENCES

Y all means let us be thankful for : small mercies in the way of bread and meat deliveries, by all means let us avail ourselves of whatever relief we can get in the way of nursemaids and baby-sitters. But let us also make an seffort to help ourselves." With this ap"peal to the common-sense of every housewife, Mrs. Hamilton Grieve, a well-known New Zealand writer and broadcaster, gets away to a flying start in the first programme of Practical Psychology. This new series of talks will be heard in ZB Women’s Hour, starting at 4ZB on June 6, and later from the other commercial stations-3ZB June 27, 2ZB July 18, and 1ZB August 3 Mrs. Hamilton Grieve speaks to homemakers as the housewife she herself is. . But domesticity is only part of her life, which is a pretty busy one. A teacher at a North Island country school, she ‘is, as well, author of several novels, and a wide radio. audience will recall her entertaining sketches of country life which, as Small-Town Portraits, were broadcast by several NZBS stations last year. The problem of today’s overworked housewife and mother is one of national importance-domestic help for the private home is practically unobtainable, and the forty-hour week a myth. So the homemaker is always’ tired. But overwork, Mrs. Grieve reminds her listeners, has never caused a nervous breakdown yet. Let’s face it, she says-it’s the tension arising from habitual emotional

thinking, from boredom, resentment, self-pity, from the depressing emotions as the psychologists call them, that is the Fifth Columnist bestraddling the energy supply-line. "Well," says the harried housewife, "housework does bore me, so what am I to do about it?" There are two things that can be done, Mrs. Grieve believes. "You can stay bored, and take the consequences. Or-" And in four talks she suggests with wit and sympathy how homemakers can use their ingenuity and initiative to meet that week-in, -weekout challenge of household routine.