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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Orientals Give Child Best Care women realize that It will be their proud turn some day, when she is gone, and they work toward it. A Good Mother And this is true not only in one family, or one exceptionally sensible sensi-ble family, it is the rule. A good mother earns power, high position and rest. How many of our elderly mothers can claim as much? How many of them have to talk loneliness loneli-ness discomfort, slights, even insolence in-solence and deprivation and neglect, neg-lect, at the end of a hard road? How many of our lightly divorced young women would hesitate if they knew that they lost face when they divorce, di-vorce, lost influence and dignity and the glorious rights of an honored old age? China discovered this long ago. We make a real mistake when we put the stress we do on "happiness" in the first few months or years of married life. Young husbands and wives think that the glowing twenties are the most Important years; 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 over. As a matter of fact the twenties ought to be considered a school, and the thirties, too. INHERE IS ONE THING, whatever your politics, that you can honestly hon-estly admire about old China. I say "one thing" because there aren't many admirable social arrangements ar-rangements in China, to the eyes of an American at least. When I was there the thing I missed was the middle class, that great class to which you and I belong, the class of comfortable homes and bathrooms bath-rooms 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 China. There were a few incredibly rich rulers at the top, and a mass of sycophants hanging on to the rulers, and then the 390 millions of the struggling, hungry, huddled masses in their mud compounds, every one of them fighting for an existence that to a traveler looks grim and hopeless at best. No, one can't admire a country in which there are no trees, no motor mo-tor cars, no roads for the cars if they were there; a country in which 50 thousand men, women and children chil-dren drown every year in preventable pre-ventable floods, starve every year in preventable famine, die every year of preventable disease. Oriental Scheme But deep in the oriental social scheme is one thing that is all good. Two things, perhaps. . First is the care they give their small children. chil-dren. Their theory is that if the first seven or eight years are protected and happy, the child has a good chance at happiness later on. So At 40 a sensible woman is on her feet, mentally, morally and physically, physi-cally, if she is worth anything at all. Her children are In upper grades, she knows the good and the bad of her mate, and her income, and her home, and her own nature. She has built about her close relationships rela-tionships with her husband's family fam-ily and her own, because she knows that the lasting thing, the valuable thing, the thing that can't be bought or imitated is the family. At 40 she knows that family events are more absorbing than visits to Europe and bridge games. m4 nMSwmm ". . . blissful . . . confident . . ." there isn't a lot of policing and scolding and punishing of the children; chil-dren; blissful, black-eyed, confident, confi-dent, they share the grown-ups' hours and food and leisure, almost undisciplined. It is not unusual to see a tiny couple of them, bundled up warm, out on the bund on a cold morning, watching Dad and his pals at work with ropes and bales, chewing contentedly on something good, and returning smiles when strange men shift them about or make them cosier. Women of the lower classes have hard jobs in China, but they stick to them. Running out on one's husband hus-band and children is not only extremely ex-tremely unpopular, but costly. A deserting wife doesn't find another mate, another home. She is outcast. If she goes into other love affairs her husband may quite excusably kill her. His children and his mother moth-er have prior rights to service and home comfort. His mother. That's the other thing that is remarkable about the Chinese family. The older Mother grows the more important she is, the more respect and care she gets. Her daughters and daughters-in-law have to put her first. They know she is the wisest, most experienced and most loving member of the family, and they defer to her. She goes on and on into increasing influence and honor and peace, and the younger |