The Plunket Society: Part of the New Zealand Way of Life?

Abstract

The post-World War II period in New Zealand has been characterised as one in which consensus about the value of the welfare state was at its height. Yet the 1959 Consultative Committee on Infant and Pre-School Health Services showed a marked public and political commitment to the maintenance of a voluntary welfare organisation, the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society. This article addresses this apparent contradiction. It will then discuss the subsequent collapse of that support-base, which coincided with the contraction of state welfare. It thus addresses the interface and relationship between state and voluntary welfare in modern times.

Notes

¹Neil Begg, The Intervening Years: A New Zealand Account of the Period between the 1910 Visit of Halley's Comet and its Reappearance in 1986 (Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1992), 107–08.

²‘Review of Maternal and Child Health in New Zealand’, Report of the Department of Health for the Year ended March 1969, Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1969, H-31, Appendix 2, 113.

³Robin McKinlay, ‘Where Would We Be Without Them? Motherhood and Self-Determination in New Zealand’ (PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1983), 257–58.

⁴Anne Digby and John Stewart, eds, Gender, Health and Welfare (London: Routledge, 1996); for New Zealand see Margaret Tennant, The Fabric of Welfare: Voluntary Organisations, Government and Welfare in New Zealand, 1840–2005 (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2007).

⁵Philippa Mein Smith, Mothers and King Baby: Infant Survival and Welfare in an Imperial World: Australia 1880–1950 (London: Macmillan, 1997); Kereen Reiger, Disenchantment of the Home: Modernizing the Australian Home, 1880–1940 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985).

⁶Kereen Reiger, Our Bodies, Our Babies: The Forgotten Women's Movement (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001).

⁷Linda Bryder, ‘“Babies of the Empire”: The Evolution of Infant Welfare Services in New Zealand and Britain in the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, in The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500–2000, eds Margaret Pelling and Scott Mandelbrote (London: Ashgate, 2005), 247–62.

⁸Linda Bryder, A Voice for Mothers: The Plunket Society and Infant Welfare 1907–2000 (Auckland: Auckland University Press), 17, 31.

⁹Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare and the State, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 43.

¹⁰Linda Bryder, ‘Two Models of Infant Welfare in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: New Zealand and the USA’, Women's History Review, 12, no. 4 (2003): 547–58; Bryder, ‘“Babies of the Empire”’, 247–62.

¹¹Plunket Society, Annual Report for 1912–13, 8.

¹²M.H. Watt, Report of the Director-General of Health Reviewing Public-Health Administration in North America, the UK and Scandinavia, with Consequent Proposals for the Development of the New Zealand System (Wellington: Government Printer, 1940), 30–31.

¹³D.J. Sheppard, Chief Accountant, Department of Health, Report to Treasury on the Plunket Society, 1 October 1958, 7, H1 127/5/9/1 37999, Archives New Zealand, Wellington (hereafter ANZ).

¹⁴N.E. Kirk to R. Mason, 14 August 1958, AAFB 127 ac w3464 127/3/8 27691, ANZ.

¹⁵ New Zealand Herald, 6 November 1958.

¹⁶ New Zealand Herald, 27 July 1959.

¹⁷Memo H. Turbott, Deputy Director General of Health, 28 February 1950, H1 127 26040, ANZ; Memo H. Turbott 31 July 1950, H1 127/4/5 25988, ANZ; Memo H. Turbott 3 August 1950, H1 127 23201 127, ANZ.

¹⁸ New Zealand Herald, 27 July 1959.

¹⁹On pre-school health services, see Bryder, Voice for Mothers, 147–48.

²⁰Mary Dobbie, The Trouble With Women: The Story of Parents’ Centre New Zealand (Queen Charlotte Sound, Whatamongo Bay: Cape Catley, 1990), 59.

²¹ Auckland Star, 22 July 1959; New Zealand Herald, 27 July 1959.

²² Evening Post, 1 July 1959.

²³Plunket Society Submission to Consultative Committee on Infant and Pre-School Health Services, 112, Plunket Society Archives (hereafter PSA), Hocken Library, Dunedin.

²⁴ Report of the Consultative Committee on Infant and Pre-school Health Services (Wellington: Government Printer, 1960), 12.

²⁵ New Zealand Herald, 27 July 1959.

²⁶ New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 1970, vol. 366, 1356.

²⁷Keith Holyoake to Mrs P.L. McKenzie, Pahiatua, 14 August 1970, H1 127 37391, Box 59, ANZ.

²⁸Board of Health, Child Health and Child Health Services in New Zealand. The Report of the Committee on Child Health, Report Series 31 (Wellington: Board of Health, 1982), 225–26.

²⁹ New Zealand Herald, 14 September 1959.

³⁰Bryder, Voice for Mothers, 175–76.

³¹See the following University of Otago Public Health theses: J.A. Calder, ‘“Non-Plunket” Mothers and Aspects of Welfare’ (1969); M.R. Chalmers, “Karitane Babies” and their Families’ (1971); D.H. Coop, ‘Problems of Breast Feeding at Richmond’ (1951); J.D. Frengley, ‘A Study of the Balclutha Branch of the Plunket Society’ (1960); J.R. Gilmour, ‘The Mother, the Baby and the Plunket Sister’ (1950); N.N. Hamilton-Gibbs, ‘The Work of the Plunket Society’ (1961); M. Hill, ‘Attitudes to Breast-feeding—Comparisons between a Rural and an Urban Area’ (1970); M.N. Hosking, ‘Aspects of Breast Feeding’ (1968); M.J. Kral, ‘The Decline of Breast Feeding’ (1963); G. Kyd, ‘Breast Feeding’ (1965); K.V. Marriott, ‘The Plunket Society: Some Opinions’ (1963); J.F. McCaffery and J.G. Perry, ‘Antenatal Training’ (1957); J.F. McGettigan, ‘Breast Feeding and Bottle Feeding in the Community’ (1971); M.D. Nash and A.H. Paul, ‘A Survey of the Truby King-Harris Hospital Dunedin’ (1950); William James Reeder, ‘The Plunket Tradition and Today's Mother’ (1969); H.F. Salkeld, ‘The New Zealand Plunket Society: Its Origin and Development’ (1948); T.C. Svenson and B.E. Tomlinson, ‘Survey of the Dunedin Karitane Hospital’ (1952); M.C. Wilson, ‘Breast Feeding’ (1949); Margaret Woods, ‘Plunket Nursing in the Invercargill Area’ (1951); J.Y. Yee, ‘To Help the Mothers and Save the Babies’ (1962).

³²Joyce Powell, Plunket Pioneers: Recollections of Plunket Nurses from 1940 to 2000 (Auckland: Heritage Press, 2003), 37

³³Ibid., 46.

³⁴Mary Boyd, ‘New Zealand and the Pacific’, in The Oxford Illustrated History of New Zealand, ed., Keith Sinclair (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1990), 314–18.

³⁵Plunket Society National Executive Minutes, 28 July 1976, PSA.

³⁶Claire O'Brien, ‘They See the Darker Side of New Zealand Life’, New Zealand Woman's Weekly, 22 (October 1984): 33–35. See also Joan Lambert, ‘“They Can't See What We See”: Voices and Standpoint of Twelve Plunket Nurses’ (M.Phil thesis, Massey University, 1984), 111 .

³⁷ Auckland Star, 17 June 1960; ‘Fighting File—Health Department-Plunket Society’, 1960, PSA.

³⁸Plunket Society Council Minutes, 30 November 1960, PSA.

³⁹Plunket Society Council Minutes, 27–28 April 1971, 18–19 April 1972, PSA.

⁴⁰Turbott to MOH Auckland, 23 November 1955; Turbott to Begg, 2 May 1962, H1 127 32110, ANZ; Turbott to Cameron, 2 April 1962, H1 127 32110 ANZ, see also Linda Bryder, ‘New Zealand's Infant Welfare Services and Maori, 1907–1960’, Health and History, 3, no. 1 (2001): 65–86.

⁴¹Plunket Society Executive Committee Minutes, 26 June 1968, PSA.

⁴² Plunket Society Annual Report, 1970–71, 13.

⁴⁶Salmond, Maternal and Infant Care in Wellington, 76. Emphasis added., 85.

⁴³G.C. Salmond, Maternal and Infant Care in Wellington: A Health Care Consumer Study, Department of Health Special Report Series 45 (Wellington: Department of Health, 1975).

⁴⁴G.S. Salmond, ‘Social Needs and Medical Services: The Inverse Care Law in New Zealand’, New Zealand Medical Journal, 80 (1974): 396–403.

⁴⁵Salmond, Maternal and Infant Care in Wellington, 76. Emphasis added.

⁴⁷Salmond, ‘Social Needs and Medical Services’, 396–403; New Zealand Herald, 13 November 1974.

⁴⁸Salmond, Maternal and Infant Care in Wellington, 55.

⁴⁹Salmond, Maternal and Infant Care in Wellington, 53.

⁵⁰Margaret D. Favell, ‘Plunket Nursing in a Social, Political and Historical Context: Clients’ Perspectives of Mothering and Nursing’ (Master of Health Sciences, University of Otago, 1997), 3, 43, 63.

⁵¹Neil Begg, Address to Auckland Provincial Conference, Kaikato, 1 July 1975, 3, AG 71-5-20, PSA.

⁵²Salmond, Maternal and Infant Care in Wellington, 79.

⁵³D.C. Geddis and P.A. Silva, ‘The Plunket Society: A Consumer Survey’, New Zealand Medical Journal, 90 (1979): 507–09; Phil A. Silva, ‘Health and Development in the Early Years’, in Child to Adult: The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, ed. P.A. Silva, W.R. Stanton (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1996), 44.

⁵⁴D.M. Fergusson, A.L. Beautrais and F.T. Shannon, ‘Maternal Satisfaction with Primary Health Care’, New Zealand Medical Journal, 94 (1981): 291–94.

⁵⁵I.B. Hassall and D.C. Geddis, ‘Letter to the Editor: The Plunket Nurse’, New Zealand Medical Journal, 94 (1981): 429–30.

⁵⁶Janette Briggs and Bridget Allan, Maternal and Infant Care in Wellington, 1978: A Health Care Consumer Study in Replication, Department of Health Special Report Series 64 (Wellington: Department of Health, 1983), 46, 49.

⁵⁷Briggs and Allan, Maternal and Infant Care in Wellington, 1978, 70.

⁵⁸Briggs and Allan, Maternal and Infant Care in Wellington, 1978, 47, 49.

⁵⁹Powell, Plunket Pioneers, 81.

⁶⁰Michael Clinton, Child Health Services in South Auckland Project: Report to the Hon Mr David Caygill, Minister of Health, June 1988, Wellington, Victoria University of Wellington, 43, 45, WA310 C641, ANZ.

⁶¹Questions on Notice, No.11, 1 March 1990, Plunket Society Funding, New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 1990, 4725.

⁶² East and Bays Courier, 6 December 1995.

⁶³ East and Bays Courier, 6 December 1995.

⁶⁴Mary Fenton, New Zealand Doctor, 7 August 1996, 4.

⁶⁵Favell, ‘Plunket Nursing in a Social, Political and Historical Context’, 139.

⁶⁶Erik Olssen, ‘Truby King and the Plunket Society: An Analysis of a Prescriptive Ideology’, New Zealand Journal of History, 15, no.1 (1981): 3–23; Erik Olssen, ‘Breeding for Empire’, New Zealand Listener, 12 May 1979, 18-9; Erik Olssen, ‘Producing a Passionless People’, New Zealand Listener, 19 May 1979, 20-1.

⁶⁷Plunket Society, Report of the Forty-third General Conference, 1976, pp. 58–59, PSA.

⁶⁸ New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol.565 (1997): 5661.

⁶⁹Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value & What Women Are Worth (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 1988).

⁷⁰Kereen Reiger, Our Bodies, Our Babies, 170, 264.