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18
The adoption of the Notification of Births Act by the Borough
Council has very much improved our means of dealing with this
mortality. It is a beneficent public health provision which, while
increasing our opportunities, has added to our responsibilities; and
where this is fully realised there can be no doubt as to value of
the results that will accrue to the more necessitous mothers of the
community.
Dr. J. R. Kaye, Medical Officer to the West Riding of Yorkshire
County Council, has well said that the influences which are responsible
for an increasing number of the children who are born but to
die are also responsible for a greatly diminished number of the
desirable type; the same influences are increasing the proportion of
children who arrive unfitted for life's struggle, with the result that the
problem of reducing our infant mortality is being rendered more and
more difficult.
The Education Code now definitely "recognises" cookery and
housewifery; I should like to see these, along with infant care and
feeding, constituted compulsory practical training courses; for no
girl's education is complete without a fair knowledge of these
subjects—indeed, a system of education which does not take them
into account badly misses its true aim of teaching us how to live
happy and useful lives. What an enormous gain it would be, from
every social standpoint, if a good housewife trained in these respects
were at the head of every home of our country. It has been truly
said that in England we have an abundance of good and cheap food,
but owing mainly to ignorance it is used wastefully.
The Royal Commission on Physical Deterioration strongly urged
the desirability of making cookery, hygiene and domestic economy,
compulsory so far as the older girls are concerned, and suggested
that this should be done by the omission of certain subjects from the
curriculum, and the concentrating of the attention upon domestic
subjects for at least a year or 18 months before leaving school.