To put the matter in a nutshell let us say that there is a general lack of social concern, a lack of discipline and an enshrouding apathy which were not present in earlier generations. Compounding the situation is the fact that people do not know the answers to problems; they make wrong choices and decisions because they have no standards of assessment, no guiding codes of social and communal conduct or a personal relationship criterion. Although the decline began earlier it was given impetus during the first world war when women started entering factories and doing jobs previously undertaken by men. Then they started to seek what they called ‘equality with men’, which is certainly their right as far as status and rights are concerned, but unfortunately a sector of women took this to mean ‘masculinisation’, and it was here that the problems really started. Men and women are fundamentally different; no man has ever produced a baby and no woman has ever fathered one, each sex having been designed for specific and very different roles in life. The supreme job of womankind has always been to maintain the integrity of the home and family. When women remained at home and concentrated on raising the children there was less crime, less delinquency and much less inter-personal discord. While mothers were the centre around which homelife revolved, maintaining discipline, devoting time and attention to the all important task of properly raising children and mindful of the needs of the next generation, society remained relatively healthy. However, once woman’s interests moved away from the sphere of domesticity young
children were left more or less to their own devices and to the influence of anti-social elements. They often became ‘latch-key children’, coming home to a cold and empty house to await a harassed, stressed and often irritable mother. They were provided with a ‘convenience’ meal and spent the evening, sometimes, in the company of parents often ill at ease with each other. As they grew up the children of such homes came under the domination of others, perhaps anti-social and vicious characters, and soon were congregating in juvenile gangs, like pack rats. The gang instinct is not new; what is new, however, is the anti-social colouring of the thinking, which was not present in earlier times. Respect for parents and law and order, for policemen, politicians and community leaders, has been replaced by derision, unfortunately not always undeserved. The seeds of present social ills were sown in the impoverished soil of an unnatural and cold, uncommunicative homelife, and it is in the same place, the home, that a cure must be effected. This is an area of prime concern to Culdians.