Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 5. 3rd April 1974
The emasculated family
The emasculated family
Dear Sir,
I want to offer my support to Dianne Hooper who in last week's Salient attacked the economic pressures which destroy family life. The exploitation conducted by business powers in Western society cannot have anything but a destructive influence on healthy loving relationships.
While Dianne goes astray occasionally as when comparing a human relationship with that of the paradise duck—the former is in an altogether different order from the latter—the basic point of her article punched home just as it needed to be.
The emasculated family we have today could be supported by no one. But a reordered, regenerated family, freed from its present terrible pressures, is what we want. While all around people suffer from impermanence and superficiality we look to the family, widened at its base and outward oriented, for the human conditions ideal for growth, permanence and stability in relationships.
I too, attack the power of economic interests which make the family victims of created desires for prestige, possessions and prosperity and destroy the chance to maintain a developing and loving relationship.
Brendan Smith