(3) Pre-marital Relations
One aspect of the moral drift is the number of people who entertain the nebulous idea that it is somehow not wrong to have pre-marital relations or to live together as man and wife without marriage.
Such a view is opposed to all the ideas of chastity which are inherent in our morality. Apart from that, an irregular sex relationship may be psychologically[6] disadvantageous.
However much adults may desire a good moral standard to be observed by children and adolescents, they have no right to expect it unless they conform to proper moral standards themselves.
(4) "Self-expression" in Children
Early in this century psychologists said that the repressive influences of early discipline were stultifying to the development of the child. They advocated that the child's personality would mature better if uninhibited. This has been interpreted by many people to mean that you should not use corrective measures in the upbringing of children and that their natural impulses must not be suppressed. Some of these people have even thought it wrong to say "No" to a child.
People brought up in this way have now become parents. It is difficult for them to adopt an attitude to their children which does not go to extremes either way. As a revolt against their own upbringing, they are either too firm in their control or too lax. Children brought up in both of these ways have been featured in the case notes of delinquent children placed before the Committee.
(5) Materialistic Concepts in Society
Education, medical and hospital treatment, industrial insurance, sickness and age benefits, and other things are all provided by the State, when the need arises, without direct charge upon the individual. The virtues of thrift and self-denial have been disappearing. Incentive does not have the place in our economy which it used to have. The tendency has been to turn to the State for the supply of all material needs. By encouraging parents to rely upon the State their sense of responsibility for the upbringing of their children has been diminished. The adolescent of today has been born into a world where things temporal, such as money values and costs, are discussed much more than spiritual things. The weekly "child's allowance" is regarded by some children as their own perquisite from the benevolent Government.
The dangers inherent in this materialistic view is that many young people who could profit from further education do not feel a sufficient inducement to continue study. They leave school too soon, and the broadening influences which could come from further education in the daytime, or the evenings, is lost to them. In the result, these young people, having too much interest in material things, and not enough in the things of the mind and the spirit, become a potential source of trouble in the community.