Motherhood
Sir: I do not know much about the fall in population, although I should have thought this overcrowded island could do with it; but as the mother of four children I can assure Auberon Waugh that what puts people off motherhood is the seven-day week, twenty-four hour day ather than any shortcomings in the social services.
I don't myself patronise the clinics much (and have never been badgered to do so) but there are plenty of inexperienced mothers, especially those living far from their family, who find the kindly and knowledgeable help there invaluable. I have always found health visitors to be pleasant and helpful women rather than
hard-faced Lesbians — but as Mr Waugh's example of Radiant Motherhood is a woman idle and indifferent enough to leave her child's health to a foreign teenager, I feel our ideas of true femininity may differ.
As for the advice to talk to the child; an experience of women ranging, like Dr Watson's, over many years and several continents has shown me that it is precisely the middle-class intellectual who needs such advice since babies don't require reasoned argument and meaningful communication so much as a constant babble of inanities on commonplace subjects.
If Mr Waugh really wants to help British Motherhood, may I suggest that there are doubtless many overworked women in the neighbourhood of Combe FloreY who would welcome his assistance. However indifferent an odd job man, he would be doing more good than by writing this sort of peevish nonsense.
Hermione Goulding Eggington Lodge, Eggington, Leighton Buzzard, Beds.
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