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The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926-1954) (about)
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Cite: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2818592
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BIG DECLINE
SEEN IN MORAL STANDARDS
The value placed on chastity has undergone a bewildering change in our time; and promis- cuity and pre-marital experi- ences were regarded "tolerantly by an increasing number of young people, said Dr. Irene Sebire, Child Guidance Clinic director, at Blackfriars, Sydney, speaking at the summer school of. the, Aus- tralian Institute of . Political Science.
"The family to-day is passing through a crisis-which many fear- ed it might not manage to sur-
vive," she said.
Dr. Scbirc said that the fath- er's role in the family unit was declining in importance with the development of the wife's econo- mic independence.
Women were becoming less willing to limit their horizons by functioning only as wife and mother and were becoming loss the satellites of men.
Dr. Sebire quoted one sociolo- gist who gave evidence of the big decline in moral standards to-day, which showed that chastny among women had fallen off from 82 per cent, in those bom after 1890 to only 32 per cent, m those born after 1910.
?Speaking of youth generally, she said that, encouraged by ear- lier parental folly and possessed of new freedoms, they had be come self-indulgent, self-centred and selfish. On the positive side, however, young people were1 easy in conversation, completely frank and free of humbug and smug-
ness.
Dr. Sebire cor-cluded by sug- gesting group advice from fam- ily welfare and marriage guid- ance officers and housekeeping classes to restore some of the
dignity of the home-maker, as j correctives to .this drift' away from family life, but this was of little value unless men and women desired in their hearts to retain marriage as an institution.