Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Orientals Give Child Best Care IS ONE whatever THERE your that you can honestly admire about old I say because there aren't many admirable social arrangements in to the eyes of an American at When I was there the thing I missed was the middle that great class to which you and I the class of comfortable homes and bathrooms and electric lights and hot water and Dad's car and two radios and school lunches and all the rest of it There was none of that In There were a few incredibly rich rulers at the and a mass of sycophants hanging on to the and then the millions of the huddled masses in their mud every one of them fighting for an existence that to a traveler looks grim and hopeless at one can't admire a country In which there are no no motor no roads for the cars If they were a country in which 50 thousand women and children drown every year In preventable starve every year In preventable die every year of preventable Oriental Scheme But deep in the oriental social scheme is one thing that is all Two First is the care they give their small Their theory is that if the first seven or eight years are protected and the child has a good chance at happiness later So blissful confident there Isn't a lot of policing and scolding and punishing of the confident they share the grown-ups' hours and foid and almost It is not unusual to see a tiny of bundled up out on the bund on a cold watching Dad and his pals at work with ropes ard chewing contentedly on something and returning smiles when strange men shut them about or make Women of the lower classes have hard jobs In but they stick to them Running out on one's husband and children is not only extremely but A deserting wife doesn't find another another She is If she goes Into other love affairs her husband may quite excusably kill His children and his mother have prior rights to service and home His That's the other thing that Is remarkable about the Chinese The older Mother grows the more important she the more respect and care she gets Her daughters and daughters-in-law have o put her They know she is the most experienced and most Roving member of the and they defer to She goes on and on into increasing influence and honor and and the younger women realize that It will be their proud turn some when she is and they work toward it A Good Mother And this is true not only In one or one exceptionally sensible it is the A good mother earns high position and How many of our elderly mothers can claim as How many of them have to talk loneliness even insolence and deprivation and at the end of a hard How many of our lightly divorced young women would hesitate If they knew that they lost face when they lost influence and dignity and the glorious rights of an honored old China discovered this long We make a real mistake when we put the stress we do on in the first few months or years of married Young husbands and wives think that the glowing twenties are the most Important if things go wrong then they leap at the conclusion that there Isn't any way out but washing the whole thing up and starting As a matter of fact the twenties ought to be considered a and the At 40 a sensible woman is on her morally and if she is worth anything at Her children are In upper she knows the good and the bad of her and her and her and her own She has built about her close relationships with her husband's family and her because she knows that the lasting the valuable the thing that can't be bought or imitated is the At 40 she knows that family events are more absorbing than visits to Europe and bridge |