Asian conference on home economics opened

JAKARTA (JP): The Asian Regional Association for Home Economics conference was opened by Mrs. Try Sutrisno yesterday.

The two-day conference, held in association with the Indonesian Home Economics Association, was attended by 350 delegates from 16 countries and a representative of the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization and an observer from the International Federation for Home Economics.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Mrs. Try said that the quality of a nation stems from the welfare of the family.

"A nation is strong and vigorous if all the families enjoy a healthy state of welfare as a result of good family welfare management," she said.

Meanwhile, Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja said that the family is the smallest and the most important unit of society that supports the nation's development.

"In the transformation era, the family needs direction in facing various social problems," he said.

Sarwono said that Asian culture still has a tradition of educating children.

"The parents' role in children's education tends to change nowadays because of various influences, especially from the broadcasting media," he said.

Sarwono, who was the keynote speaker at the conference, said today many children are left alone at home because their parents work to support the family.

"To deal with the problems," Sarwono said, "we could do several things, like teaching the basic social values to the children, among others."

Second, he said, parents should set good examples for their children.

Sarwono said that teaching children traditional values also means educating them. He said that a value system that should be taught to them is how to differentiate between good and evil.

According to the minister, what today's family needs most is a high quality of involvement of parents in children's education.

"We need to define ways to communicate with them intensively and how to be together with the family as often as possible."

Sarwono said that he does not have any cable TV at home because the electronic media is too powerful in influencing audiences, including children.

He said parents should teach their children the importance of reading, writing, listening and discussion.

He expressed hope that the conference would enable everyone present to respond to immense challenges faced by children.

In the plenary session delegates from Malaysia, Singapore, China and the Philippines said they agreed that it is very important to provide children with a basic value system education to prepare them for their future.

Rozumah B., a Malaysian delegate, presented her paper discussing the significance of relationships between the parents' educational and economic backgrounds and the children's intelligence.

She said that the more educated a mother is and the higher income she earns, the higher parenting knowledge she has.

A Singapore delegate spoke about the parent support program that is designed to help parents in their challenging tasks.

Tng Sai-tin said that family values such as love, care and concern are very much needed by children for them to feel comfortable and secure in their surroundings.

"Mutual respect between parents and children is also needed to build a happy family," Tng said.

"Mutual respect means recognition, acceptance and tolerance of differences."

Feng Jue Xin from China said in her speech that family factors that can affect children's socialization are the quality of the parent's education, their educational method, marriage, the structure of the family and the parents' psychological stability. (05)