YOUR JOB AS A PARENT

Rev. George Kelly

IF YOU could carefully study families that are genuinely happy—those in which father and mother truly love each other and their children, and where children obey, respect and love their parents—you would find that they have many traits in common. These characteristics are distinct and recognizable, and sharply differentiate these families from those in which there is unending tension, bickering and bitterness.

No institution has had the opportunity to observe the characteristics of happy families as has the Church. Through the centuries, she has recognized the family as the ideal means of helping parents and children to lead holy and happy lives, and she has carefully noted which factors best encourage holiness and happiness. What she has long known has been borne out in recent years by the studies of social scientists. These researchers have questioned thousands of persons who, by their own testimony, are members of happy families; and they have questioned other thousands who admit that their family life is not happy. From such beginnings they have uncovered the characteristics of happy families which are lacking in the other kind. The findings of the Church, tested over the centuries, and of sociologists, using modern scientific methods, agree that there are five main characteristics of a happy family.

First, it places full, unquestioned trust in God. Father, mother and children accept the Almighty as their Creator without reservation. They show love and respect for Him and His laws in the everyday conduct of their lives. They pray together; they attend Mass and receive Communion together; they practice other devotions together; they make their home a little sanctuary, with pictures and statues to remind them of Our Lord or the Blessed Mother.

The father who believes and trusts in God is best equipped to perform his functions as head of the family. Aware of his responsibilities to the Lord for his children, he strives to instill moral virtues by his own example. The mother who holds the Blessed Virgin as her model develops the love and patience which nurture the spiritual and emotional growth of her children.

When father and mother give living evidence of their faith in God, they no longer need spend so much time trying to decide which course to pursue in bringing up their children. They usually know what to do, because they have a standard to guide them. They only ask: What does God want of us as parents? When they seek to understand His way and to follow it, they free themselves of the confusion which besets parents without standards upon which to rest.

Children in a home where God is worshipped also know where they stand. They are taught to respect the Creator and, in respecting Him, to respect all lawful authority. They learn in a precise way what conduct is acceptable and what is forbidden. In their study of religion and religious truths, they learn at an early age that punishment will inevitably follow wrongdoing; thus they learn the major principle which will guide their conduct throughout their lives.

Many authorities have observed that a major sign of danger in marriage arises when one or both of the partners stops attending religious services regularly. Records of the nation’s courts clearly prove that the home which worships God does not produce the child who appears before a judge on charges of juvenile delinquency. Studies of unwed mothers prove that the girl who has learned the virtue of purity in a religious setting at home is not the one who gets into trouble in her adolescence.

Second, the happy family puts interest in its home in first place. Father and mother fully recognize that the most important work they can do is to train their children to be a credit in the eyes of God.

One sometimes encounters a father who spends long hours at business during the week and then spends his week ends with business associates. In pursuing success or wealth—and perhaps believing that he is a good father in doing so—he refuses his children’s fundamental need to know him as a human being. On the other hand, one often sees men who hold positions which, by the worlds standards, are low in social prestige. Perhaps they sacrifice material progress by devoting their leisure time to their children—playing and talking with them, sympathizing with their problems and encouraging them in their aspirations. Regardless of what the world thinks, the first type of father is a failure and the second type is a success.

In a happy home, parents often hold firm against other allurements which tempt them to put the needs of their children in an inferior place. Such allurements include the desire for an overly active social life, the constant pursuit of pleasure in the form of commercial entertainment and the exclusive choice of hobbies (golf, cards, dancing clubs, etc.) from which children are excluded.

Obviously, men must work to provide for their families. It is also obvious that parents are entitled to entertainment away from their children—in fact, an evening alone can have a pronounced therapeutic effect. Nor is the desire to succeed in business or to enjoy one’s self blameworthy. But when a father becomes overly ambitious and sacrifices his children for his career advancement, or when a mother engages in an unending round of social activities, the great bond of unity in the family is weakened. Mutual love and respect, which are born and held only in intimacy, are the ingredients that make for true family life, and they cannot thrive when the father or mother places other objectives ahead of them.

Third, in happy families, father and mother occupy a position of equality, but there is no misunderstanding that he is the head. The importance of the mother is an accepted fact. She is the heart of the family—the custodian of love and warmth, the first comforter and educator of the children. In according her a just status, however, we must not weaken the father’s traditional position.

By nature and temperament, he should exercise headship. When he fails to do so, his children lack an appropriate male model to guide them in their conduct, and they are likely to reach maturity without properly understanding the roles they must play as men or women. But while he must be the leader, he should not be like a common type of fathers of the past—the tyrant whose word was law, and whose wife and children constantly trembled before him. Such a father does more harm than good; his children either become submissive before everyone, or become so rebellious against authority that they cannot lead normal lives as law-abiding citizens. In happy homes, the father is the just dispenser of punishment, but he also wins the respect of his children by the reasonable rules he imposes and the merciful way he enforces them.

Fourth, the happy family is based upon mutual sacrifice. In such a home, Dad will forgo desserts at lunch to save for a family vacation which all members of the family may enjoy. Mother will wear a dress that is several seasons old so that her daughter may take piano lessons; and the children will save for weeks to buy her a special gift for Mother’s Day. When Dad must do extra work at home for his employer and Mother can help him, she gladly does so. When guests are coming and the house needs a thorough cleaning, Dad rolls up his sleeves and does his share of the manly work. Johnny washes the windows as his regular chore, Billy sets the table for dinner, Mary washes the dishes while Mother rests, and after school Tommy sometimes watches the baby in her playpen while Mother shops. In this family, everyone makes sacrifices for the common good.

Fifth, the happy family runs on rules. The children know exactly what they can do without offending others, and what they cannot do. They know what their punishment will be if they break the rules. And they know that it will not vary from time to time or from parent to parent.

Establishing clear-cut family rules requires complete agreement between father and mother. Few things disturb a child more than when his father establishes one standard of conduct and his mother makes continuous exceptions to it. Once a father and mother agree, neither should change the rules without consulting the other, or the child will not know what is expected of him. And both father and mother must share in enforcing them.

Probably the happiest homes are those in which each family member imposes rules upon himself. One wife becomes unduly disturbed whenever references are made to the alleged inferiority of women in any area of activity. She becomes angry at jokes about women drivers, women who are late for appointments, women who can’t balance a checkbook. Out of respect for her feelings, her husband never raises such subjects even in a joking way. Many husbands have similar quirks in their make-up which may be unjustified from an objective point of view but which their wives respect for the sake of harmony. Sometimes children also become sensitive about certain points. When family members are motivated by a spirit of Christian tolerance, they willingly impose the rule upon themselves not to raise such touchy subjects.

As this review of the characteristics of happy families suggests, achievement of a genuinely Christian environment in your home will not result from mere chance. Rather you must put into effect the principles that follow from recognition of the fact that the family should be a triangle with God at its apex, or else it is doomed to failure. For the very characteristics that make a home holy, happy, and a source of strength and solace for its members come from nowhere but Almighty God. The love which the mother displays for her infant, the just and consistent way in which the father exercises his authority—these are but human copies of the loving authority which God exercises over all His children. And the respect for God and each other that family members display in the truly happy and Christian home springs from the two greatest commandments—that we love God with all our minds and all our hearts, and that we love our neighbour as ourselves.

Advantages of the large family. Before marrying, many young couples decide how many children they will have—a decision which often reveals that they are more concerned with how few children they will have rather than how many. Thus they begin their marriage with intentions of limiting the number of off spring. In this respect they reflect the birth-control frame of mind so prevalent today—a frame of mind which regards children as a liability rather than a blessing.

Although the first purpose of marriage is the procreation of children, Catholic couples will not necessarily have offspring. There may be many reasons why they cannot have babies or why they are limited to one or two. Some wives have difficulty in carrying a foetus to full term and have many miscarriages. Sometimes the husband or wife may be sterile—unable to do his or her part in conceiving a new life. There may be mental, eugenical, economic or social reasons which make it justifiable to practice the rhythm method. The fact that a Catholic couple has no children, therefore, is no reason for concluding that they are guilty of any moral lapse.

In most marriages, however, there probably are no physical hindrances to births or justifiable reasons to limit them beyond those limitations which nature herself and unchangeable circumstance impose. Hence the typical Catholic family will have many more children than are found in the average family of other beliefs.

The large family provides many distinct advantages for both parents and children. For instance, it brings the mother and father closer together, giving them a joint source of love, and they achieve a closer sense of unity in planning for their children’s welfare. Their love for each child extends their love for each other, and in each child they can see qualities which they love in their mates.

Children help parents to develop the virtues of self-sacrifice and consideration for others. The childless husband and wife must consciously cultivate these qualities, for the very nature of their life tends to make them think first of their own interests. In contrast, a father and mother who might have innate tendencies toward selfishness learn that they must subjugate their own interests for the good of their children, and they develop a spirit of self-denial and a higher degree of sanctity than might normally be possible.

The fact that children help to increase harmony in marriage has been proved in many ways. The sociologist Harold A. Phelps, in his book “Contemporary Social Problems,” reports that 57 per cent of the divorcees in one large group had no children and another 20 per cent had only one child. Other researchers have established that the percentage of divorces and broken homes decreases as the number of children in the family increases.

Large families also teach children to live harmoniously with others. They must adjust to the wishes of those older and younger than themselves, and of their own and the other sex. In learning to work, play and, above all, share with others, the child in a large family discovers that he must often sacrifice his own interests and desires for the common good. For this reason, the “spoiled child” who always insists on having his own way is rare in the large family, if he can be found there at all. For the child who will not co-operate with others has a lesson forcibly taught to him when others refuse to cooperate with him.

In the typical large family, one often sees a sense of protectiveness in one child for another that is the embodiment of the Christian spirit. Children learn to help each other—to hold each other’s hands when crossing the street, to sympathize with each other in times of sadness or hurt, and to give each other the acceptance which we all need to develop as mature human beings. This willingness to help one another is often strikingly evident in schoolwork: the oldest child instructs his younger brother in algebra, while the latter helps a still younger one in history.

Another advantage of large families is that they teach each child to accept responsibility for his own actions. Unlike the mother with one or two children, the mother of a large family usually lacks the time and energy to concern herself with every little problem of her children. She must observe sensible precautions with her children, of course, but she is not guilty of supervising her child’s life to such an extent that he has no chance to develop his own resources. Precisely because she cannot devote her full time to him, he must make decisions for himself. Moreover, he acquires a better understanding of the rules by which the family is run. He sees his brothers and sisters punished for various breaches of conduct and learns what he himself may and may not do. And as he watches the progress of older children, he learns what privileges he may expect as he too advances in age. This knowledge gives him a greater sense of security.

Another reward for members of the large family, to which those who are now adults can testify, is that it gives the children close relatives upon whom they can depend all their lives. Occasionally, of course, brothers and sisters cannot agree as adults and break off relations completely. More often, however, they retain a close bond of kinship with each other and the reunions and family get-togethers on occasions like Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter form one of the great joys of their lives. In most cases, the child brought up in a large family never feels utterly alone, regardless of adversities which may strike in adulthood. If he is troubled or bereaved, in desperate need of financial help or sympathetic advice, he usually can depend upon brothers and sisters to help. Forlorn indeed is the man or woman who, in time of stress, has no close and loving relatives to tell his problems to.

A final, but by no means least important, advantage is that they virtually insure the parents against loneliness, which has often been called the curse of the aged. How often do the father and mother of a large family remain young at heart because of the love they give to, and draw from, their grandchildren? In fact, many say that old age is their happiest time of life because they can enjoy to the fullest the love of the children and grandchildren without the accompanying responsibility. On the other hand, how lonely and miserable are the typical old people who have no children or grandchildren to love them?

One should not overlook the fact that there are some disadvantages to both parent and child in the large family. However, an objective review of these disadvantages would surely establish that they are outweighed by the advantages. For example, the large family may require the parents to make great financial sacrifices. They may be unable to afford as comfortable a home, own as new an automobile, or dress as well as can the husband and wife with a small family. But they have sources of lasting joy in the love, warmth and affection of their children—a joy that money cannot buy. The children of a large family may also be required to make sacrifices. Their parents may be unable to pay their way in college. But this need not mean that they will be denied educational opportunities. Thanks to scholarships, loan programs, and opportunities for student employment, the bright boy and girl who truly desires a college education can find the financial resources to obtain one. And having to earn at least a part of their own way will make them better students. Researchers have established that students who drop out of college most frequently have had all their expenses paid for them and have never learned the true value of an education.

Considerations for parents of small families. If you have but one or two children, you should try to create for them opportunities such as exist in larger families to develop their characters. In particular, you should discourage selfish tendencies—a natural hazard in the small family. Since you can concentrate all your attention upon your child, you may tend to worry about him to a greater extent and to bow to his whims more often than do parents of a large family. There is a natural danger, therefore, that he will become accustomed to having his own way and will not recognize that others have desires which should be accommodated too.

In training an only child, it may help you to remember that self-denial is the virtue from which other virtues spring. You should therefore strongly resist the tendency to do everything for him and not permit him to want for anything. So that he may learn to get along with others, encourage him to cultivate friends. Invite them to your home where he will be the host and thus must exert himself to please them.

Finally, give him the freedom to develop in his own way. You must control the impulse to worry unduly about every ailment, to stand guard over him at play, to check up constantly on his teachers to make sure that they are doing their job right. Such actions would betray a tendency to interfere abnormally in your child’s affairs. Unless you avoid them you may find yourself ultimately trying to dictate where he should work and whom he should marry, and you will make it difficult for him ever to make decisions for himself.

How to be a good father. Probably nobody denies that the typical father exercises less authority in his home today than at any time in history. Reasons for this decline probably are of no interest or help in the present discussion; but the effect of it cannot be overlooked. For evidence accumulated by psychiatrists, social workers and similar experts proves unmistakably that when children lack a strong father to guide them, they suffer serious damage in many important ways. Consider these facts:

There is a startling growth in homosexual tendencies among the young, and most authorities agree that the boy who develops feminine characteristics usually has had unsatisfactory relations with his father in one or several important respects. Increases in juvenile delinquency—a headlined trend in every part of the country—are also due to the weak position of the father; the lack of an affectionate and understanding relationship between father and son is a prevalent characteristic in the background of boys charged with criminal offenses. Many authorities also blame the shocking rates of divorce and marriage breakdowns to this cause. The fathers of those who cannot succeed in marriage often never gave their children a realistic example of how a man should live with his wife in this relationship.

The importance of the father as an example of manhood to his son and daughter probably cannot be overestimated. For example, one day your son may marry and have a family. To be a successful father, he should know how to train his children; how to treat his wife and their mother in their presence; what to discuss with them about his work; how to show them manual skills, such as repairing a chair or painting furniture; how to perform in countless other important areas. The best way to learn how to act as a father is to observe one in action.

What ideals will he display as husband and father? To a large extent, that answer will depend upon those he has learned from you, his father, in your own home. What part will he play in the religious education of his children? The answer will largely depend upon whether you have led the family to Mass each Sunday, whether you say grace before meals in your home, whether you take an active part in the spiritual life of your parish. How should he act toward his wife—aloof, affectionate, domineering, docile? Here too the answer will mainly depend upon your example.

The adage, “Like father, like son,” is firmly based on fact. No matter how much he may resist your influence, your son will be like you in many different ways. If your influence is wholesome, the effect upon him will be wholesome. If you are a bad father, you will almost surely corrupt him in some significant way. Remember also that you represent God before your child because you are—or should be—the figure of authority in your home. He will be taught that he can always depend upon the mercy and goodness of the eternal Father, but it will be difficult for him to grasp the full importance of that teaching if he cannot rely upon the goodness of his earthly father.

It has been said that, in addition to giving wholesome example, a good father follows four fundamental rules in his dealing with his children. First, he shows himself to be truly and sincerely interested in their welfare. Secondly, he accepts each child for what he is, and encourages any special talent which the youngster possesses. Thirdly, he takes an active part in disciplining his children. And finally, he keeps lines of communication open with them at all times. Each of these rules is worth detailed consideration, because the typical American father often ignores one or more of them.

1. Show an interest in your child’s welfare. You can do this by devoting time to him, every day if possible. Try to discuss with him his experiences, problems, successes and failures. By giving yourself to him in this intimate way, you give him the feeling that he can always depend upon you to understand and help him in his difficulties. In a large family, it is especially important that you find time for intimate moments with each child. Every youngster should know that his father is interested in him as an individual, and is sympathetic with him and devoted to his welfare.

Modern fathers may find it more difficult to make their children an intimate part of their lives than did men of a few generations ago. Today’s fathers often work many miles away from home. They leave for their jobs early in the morning and do not return until late in the evening, perhaps after the children are in bed. Unlike the men of an earlier age who often worked close to their homes, today’s fathers may seldom see their youngsters during the week. To offset this condition, they should try to devote as much of their week ends to them as possible. This does not mean that you should be a “pal” to your children or that you must act like a juvenile, when aging bones may not permit this. But at family gatherings, picnics, trips to the ball park or even visits to the school, you are sharing leisure moments with them.

2. Accept your child and encourage his talents. One man hoped for a son, and found it impossible to conceal his disappointment when a girl was born. He now spends much time trying to inculcate masculine virtues in her and berates her constantly because she is not proficient at sports. A successful lawyer prides himself upon his intellect and once hoped that his son would achieve great scholastic success. But the lad, now in high school, has shown no pronounced ability in academic work; however, he is skilled at working with his hands. He must face unending sneers from his father about his “stupidity. A third man married a beautiful woman and expected his daughters to be beauties too. One girl is extremely plain, however. Even at the age of ten she knows that she is a complete disappointment to her father.

All of these examples indicate ways in which fathers display a lack of acceptance of their children. It is a fact that the qualities a child inherits—his physical attributes, aptitudes, and many other characteristics—are the result of chance. He may be a genius or an idiot: you should not claim credit if the first possibility occurs any more than you should feel ashamed for the second. The moral is plain: your children are a gift from God, and you should always accept each of them in a spirit of gratitude. In fact, the saintly father will accept a defective child with greater gratitude, for God has offered him an opportunity to provide more love, affection and direction than the ordinary youngster might need.

Remember also that your child is an individual, with talents which you perhaps cannot appreciate. Let him develop them in the best way possible. In attempting to learn why many gifted children do not go to college, researchers have found that their parents often have actively discouraged them. In a typical case, a father became wealthy through real estate investments and could easily afford college for a son with a strong aptitude in science. But the father accused the boy of trying to “put on airs” whenever college was discussed. Thanks to him, the son is now a misfit.

3. Don’t shirk unpleasant tasks of parenthood. “See your mother; don’t bother me” is a remark commonly made by one type of father. He returns from work, eats his dinner and then settles down to an evening behind his newspaper or before the television screen. When his children seek his aid with their homework or when they become unruly and require a strong parental hand, he is “too busy” to pay attention. Such an attitude tells a child that his mother is the true figure of importance in the family, while Dad is only the boarder who pays the bills.

It is not fair for fathers to enjoy all the pleasures of parenthood—to play with the children, to boast about their growth—and to give mothers all the painful duties. A father should discipline as often as the mother. If he fails to do so, he gives the children the idea that he does not stand with the mother in her efforts to instill proper manners and acceptable forms of behaviour. As a matter of fact, in major matters the good father is likely to be the court of last resort. This is as it should be for his authority is more impressive and its effect more lasting than that of the mother.

4. Keep lines of communication open with your children. Teenagers often say that they cannot talk to their fathers about questions which disturb them. This breakdown in communication usually stems from one of three factors, or a combination of them. The father may be so severe in his discipline that he appears as a dictator in the youngster’s mind; in the past he has always been “too busy” to keep on close terms with his boy; or he has not given his youngster the respectful attention he should have.

Stalin-type fathers fortunately are on the way out in America, for most men have learned that it is easier to train a child with loving kindness than with brute force. But some stern unyielding fathers remain. They may beat their child into patterns of behaviour that offend no one, but in the process they often create a bitter adult who is never able to confide fully in another human being.

The second and third possible explanations for a child’s unwillingness or inability to confide in his father may have even worse effects than the first. In the first instance, unless the father is a calloused brute, his child may at least discern evidence that his father is interested in his welfare. But when a father does not even care enough to concern himself with the child’s upbringing in any serious way, he evidences a complete absence of love or interest.

There are many things that human beings prefer to keep to themselves, and it is probably good that this is so. Your child should not feel that he must lay bare his innermost thoughts and desires. But he should know that in times of stress and strain he has a sympathetic and loving adviser to turn to. You will fulfill that role if you strive always to treat him with courtesy and sympathy, and with an understanding based upon your memory of the difficulties, problems, fears and aspirations of your own boyhood. Never ridicule him: it is the opposite of sympathy and probably locks more doors between father and son than any other action.

How to be a good mother. In view of the many social evils resulting from the decline in the father’s influence, one of the most important functions the modern mother should perform is to help maintain or restore the father’s position of authority in the family. In doing so, you will fulfill your own role as a wife and mother to a greater extent than is possible when you permit your husband to be the lesser figure. This was the secret of the success of olden fathers. Even though they worked twelve hours a day, their dominant role in the home was guaranteed and protected by the mother.

You can make your greatest contribution to your family as the heart of your home—not its head. From you, your children should learn to love others and to give of themselves unstintingly in the spirit of sacrifice. Never underestimate the importance of your role. For upon you depends the emotional growth of your children, and such growth will better prepare them to live happy and holy lives than any amount of intellectual training they may receive.

Most of us know persons who have received the finest educations which universities can bestow, who yet lead miserable lives because they have never achieved a capacity to love. On the other hand, we also know of men and women whose intellectual achievements are below normal but whose lives are filled with happiness because their mothers showed them how to love other human beings. It follows that in helping your child to satisfy his basic emotional needs to love and be loved, you give something as necessary as food for his full development. So do not be beguiled by aspirations for a worldly career or by the desire to prove yourself as intelligent as men or as capable in affairs of the world as they. The father must always remain a public figure. The mother is the domestic figure par excellence. In teaching your child the meaning of unselfish love you will achieve a greater good than almost any other accomplishment of which human beings are capable.

You are the most important person your child will ever know. Your relationship with him will transcend, in depth of feeling, any other relationship he probably will ever have—even the one with his marriage partner. As noted above, from you he will learn what true love really is. From the tenderness you show and the security you give, you will develop his attitudes toward other human beings which will always remain with him.

However, his dependence on you begins to wane soon after birth—and continues to wane for the rest of your life. In his first years, naturally, he will rely upon you almost entirely—not only for food, but also to help him perform his most elementary acts. But soon he learns to walk and to do other things for himself; when he goes to school he can dress himself; when he reaches adolescence and strives for the freedom that adults know, he will try to throw off his dependence so violently that you may fear that you have lost all hold upon him.

Your job is to help him reach this state of full and complete independence in a gradual fashion. And your success as a mother will depend to a great extent upon the amount of emancipation you permit him as he steps progressively toward adulthood. Therefore you should try to judge realistically when your child truly needs your help and when he does not.

If you can reach the happy medium wherein you do for your child only what he cannot do for himself, you will avoid dominating him or overindulging him. The dominant mother makes all decisions for Johnny and treats him as though he had no mind of his own; the overindulgent mother will never permit her Mary to be frustrated in any wish, or to be forbidden any pleasure her little heart desires. The overindulgent mother may do without the shoes she needs to buy a doll for her Annie; she may stop what she is doing to help Johnny find the comic book he has misplaced; she may eat the leftovers in the refrigerator while she gives the freshly prepared food to her children.

The overindulgent mother is a common character in literature. Probably every American woman has seen movies and television programs, and has read stories in magazines and newspapers, in which these defects were pointed out. Yet every new generation of mothers seems to practice the same extreme of behaviour. Some excuse themselves by saying that they want to give their children every advantage in life. Such an intention is laudable, perhaps, but the method is impractical. If you want to do the best for your child, let him develop so that he can face life on his own feet. Overindulging him denies him his right to develop his own resources and thus defeats the purpose of your mission as a mother.

Someone once remarked in jest that as part of her education for motherhood, every woman should visit the psychiatric ward of an army hospital. If you could see the countless examples of mental disorders caused largely by the failure of mothers to sever the apron strings to their child, you could easily understand why—for the sake of your child’s emotional self—you must make it a primary aim to help him to develop as an independent person.

Priests and psychiatrists often see problems from different angles, yet they display striking agreement in pinpointing other kinds of maternal conduct which do great harm to the child. Their advice might be summarized as follows:

Don’t be an autocrat who always knows best. Your child may have his own way of doing things, which may seem to be inefficient or time-consuming. Have patience and let him do things his way, thus giving him the opportunity to learn by trial and error.

Don’t be a martyr. Naturally, you must make sacrifices. But do not go to such extremes that your child feels guilty when you deny yourself something which rightfully should be yours, in order to give him what rightfully should not be his. A typical martyr worked at night in a laundry to pay her son’s way through college. Before his graduation, he asked her not to appear at the ceremony—he said she would be dressed so poorly that he would be embarrassed.

Don’t think you have the perfect child. Some mothers, when their child receives low grades, appear at school to determine, not what is wrong with him, but what is wrong with the teachers. When such a mother learns that her son has been punished for disobedience, she descends upon the school officials and demands an apology. By her actions she undermines the child’s respect for all authority—including her own. You will probably be on safe ground, until your child is canonized at St. Peter’s, if you conclude that he has the same human faults and weaknesses that you see in your neighbours’ children.

Don’t use a sick-bed as your throne. The “whining” mother feigns illness to attract sympathy and to force her children to do as she wills. Who would deny the last wish of a dying person? In this vein she often gets what she wants—for a while. The usual, final result, however, is that her children lose both sympathy and respect for her.

Don’t be a “glamour girl.” Motherhood is not a task for a woman who thinks that ordinary housework—preparing meals, making beds, washing clothes—is beneath her. Of course, mothers should strive to maintain a pleasing appearance, but they should also realize that they are most attractive when they are fulfilling the duties of their noble vocation. You would embarrass your family if you insisted on acting and dressing like a teen-ager; and, if you adopted a demeaning attitude toward household tasks, you would teach your children that motherhood and its responsibilities are unworthy of respect.

NIHIL OBSTAT:

John A. Goodwine, J.C.D., Censor Librorum

IMPRIMATUR:

Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York

The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication

is contained therein that those who have granted the nihil obstat and imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed.

August 22, 1959

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THE VOCATION OF PARENTS

Saint Francis de Sales said, “The purpose of parenthood is to people the earth with adorers of God and to fill heaven with saints.” And there it is.

We can base all our ideas on bringing up children on this motive. It is a consideration for every married couple with children, for all souls who hope some day to be parents. There is the whole purpose of parenthood. It follows then that everything we do in relation to our children should have that end in view.

This is the task to which mothers and fathers should be dedicated. How few parents are working toward that end, however! Why are they neglecting to do so? Not out of sheer perverseness, usually, but mainly because ever so many, even Catholics, do not know the purpose of parenthood. As a matter of fact, many Catholics in spite of memorized catechism lessons are hardly aware of the purpose of their own existence: to know God, to love Him, and to serve Him forever in heaven. And though we may not condone their senseless driftings through life, neither must we hastily condemn them.

Mothers

We know there are mothers today neglecting that goal of parenthood, but not because they are deliberately ignoring it. Rather they are ignorant of it.

But mothers should be told and should be reminded over and over again. And it must be impressed on them that they should give unstintingly all the time and consideration required for the task.

In our day most mothers are not remiss in child care. We cod-liver oil them, feed them, dress them well. We attend to all the rules of hygiene and health. Even the poorest of us give remarkable care to these aspects of child-raising. When I lived in a slum clearance housing project mothers regularly attended classes in “nutrition” and other lectures at the health center. They brought their babies for “shots” for prevention of various diseases; they made use of the variety of medical and dental treatment offered by the council‟s free health stations, and its hospitals, clinics and dispensaries. There was a surprising amount of talk among neighbors concerning child care, child education, child psychology.

Yet while we raise strong, sturdy bodies and alert, lively minds, we are apt to leave their souls stunted, warped, left in a foreverness of infancy. Their minds and bodies take up our time and effort. Their souls are tightly closed buds that may never be opened to the light of God and blossom on this earth.

When we once know what parenthood is all about and recognize what is before us, we will learn to love and study our children in a new, bolder, stronger way. We will have willing ears for their childish chatter and we will have more patience and joy with them. Mothers must look on their little ones as souls that belong to God and whom He holds dear. Then we will lift our daily living with the children to a higher level than we might achieve with the most noble of materialistic ideals.

The charge is commonly made that mothers are too ”tied down,” their existence is too drab, they are shut away from the world. If only we could be shut away from the world! Actually for most of us the truth is that the world is too much with us. We are being suffocated by it.

With radio on from rising till retiring, gab sessions on the telephone, the “dailies,” the picture-splattered magazines filling in, in panting sentences, the details omitted on the broadcast bulletins and now in more and more homes, television, too—we are taken up in a whirl by the world. How does a mother manage to keep her nerves calmed, her emotions stable when they are so constantly under attack?

And most of us have a particular weak spot. I‟ll admit it‟s politics, the state of the nation and the world that disturbs me. Then I know a woman who gets worked to near hysteria by the radio soapbox serials. After one particularly trying day at the radio, she was in tears when her husband came home from work, and couldn‟t prepare his supper, she was so broken up over the adventures of Ma-Soap-and-So. And she was not a neurotic, middle-aged woman but a young bride. There are others whose minds are always filled up with the gossips and sins (imaginary or otherwise) of their neighbors and the affairs of their own assorted relatives. There are mothers to whom cleanliness is such a fetish that they are always drawn taut and‟ tense with housecleaning, laundering, and face washing (usually accompanied by slappings and scoldings) their little ones, and are frightfully disturbed over smudges on their scrubbed-down domains.

It does not matter whether we are preoccupied with national affairs, gossip or a shiny floor, the Devil achieves his aim when such things interfere with our home life and our children. It is true that children can “get on your nerves,” cause you to blow up, become sharp and short-tempered. But if we find it happening daily and many times a day we ought to search our hearts to see if it is actually the children who are the cause or if their annoyances are only the fuel that sets off a powder keg of nerves and irritation inside us; a powder keg we ourselves filled up with outside misery that should not have been permitted entrance in the first place.

Perhaps it is good for mothers to be “up-to-the-minute,” smart, socially active, but first of all they should be mothers. If we can‟t be everything, then let‟s not put motherhood in last place or out of the running. What our children need are their mothers. So we ought to concentrate on that, living strictly according to our vocation, being worthy of it, seeking to perfect ourselves in it.

Yes, to be a mother we have to face living in a mature, grown-up way and let our life be full of purpose, our actions have meaning and our existence be fruitful. That‟s why it‟s so disheartening to see mothers allow everything else under the sun to fill up their minds, prevent them from thinking. That‟s why it‟s so wrong for mothers to dissipate themselves on stupid worthless chatter or become addicts of TV, movies, radio and tabloids.

No, we don‟t have to enter a convent to combine work and prayer and do all we do for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, especially in our case, the souls in our own household. We just work at being a loving mother.

There is one cue in particular, a danger signal which mothers should watch for. Beware the words, “Go away, don‟t bother me!” Of course, children should not be spoiled, pampered, catered to as though mother were a lackey and the child a king, but something is amiss when mothers are always seeking ways to “chase them away” either to the TV, a movie, or a friend‟s house, or elsewhere to play. Blessed is the mother who gives in a well-balanced, cheerful and wholesome way her thought and time and life for her children.

Fathers

As to fathers, everything there is to say about fathers can be summed up thus, “The husband should be the head of the house.” Simply because this expression is bandied about and joked over today we no longer have any concept of what it means and what it entails. No ruthless tyranny, no bloated, beastly authority substitutes for fatherhood. The divine plan for fatherhood makes it a sacred thing. If we rightly understood the sense in which the husband is the head of the house and the wife the heart we would know why a certain Trappist priest said, “If I had my way, vigil lights would be burned before married couples.”

One spiritual writer has described the family as a little church with the father as the bishop.

Coming down to plain, everyday existence, let us face the fact of father‟s first place. The father rightly should be

the provider and mainstay of the family but his vocation consists of far more than that. It is not enough to bring home a pay envelope and consider his obligation fulfilled. He should be more than a provider just as the other should be more than a housekeeper and nursemaid. He must shoulder the responsibilities in managing home and family, should take the initiative in new ventures in the development of the family and its progress and welfare. It is so wrong for a husband to leave all the decisions, all the responsibilities, all the thinking to the wife. If God had not wanted marriage to be a partnership, he could so simply have created one sex.

Yet there are homes where one partner must do the work of two. Usually it is the woman, but she can never really be father and mother both. Many heroic souls carry this burden bravely but usually everyone suffers from it. The children are deprived of well-balanced homes and a real father. The mother weighted down with more than her share often suffers physically and mentally. The man, not fully living his manhood, is debilitated and whatever front he brags remains weak and undeveloped in character.

Some of the blame lies on women themselves, mothers who brought their sons up pampered and spineless, wives who want to run the whole show themselves. Yet there are men who deliberately shirk the duties of the “head of the house.” The nation is full of them settling the affairs of the world and sport over their beers, disdaining as beneath them their kingship at home.

But a home must have its head. Authority is necessary to order and life. The mother having a twenty-four hour day job in her own realm needs a wise head and a good heart beside her. The children need a father to fill the place God made for fatherhood in their lives. And Dad must be more than a good sport, he must be a good soul. Our children‟s first world is—mother, father, home. If we teach them to say “Our Father Who art in heaven,” they ought to have a decent meaning for the word “father” and where else will they learn it but from their personal experience with their father on earth. If we teach them to call God “Our Father,” then father must be a tremendous living force else the word is a mockery, perhaps a blasphemy.

Once an agnostic acquaintance told me he could never “accept” the fourth commandment. He added bitterly, “If you knew what associations the word has for me, you would never ask me to call God „Father.”‟ Granted all fathers may not cause such a poisonous reaction in their sons. But how many have been such a negative quantity in their children‟s lives that whole generations have grown up never quite making any sense out of calling God their “Father.”

They do not think of God as the Source of Life when they regard only vaguely and perhaps in a most accidental way their own father‟s part in bringing them to life. They cannot imagine God providing for them, nurturing them, solicitous for them, protecting them, supremely interested in their affairs, tenderly possessing them, even laying down His life for them, when their earthly father was hardly the type to do these things. Can we expect our children to have faith in a heavenly Father Whom they cannot see when they can‟t even have faith in the only father they do know?

The head of the house ought to be in his own human way and in his earthly realm the father, as God is the Father in His divine way and supernatural realm. Reams have been written on motherhood but there is still too little said today on the place and importance of fatherhood. Yet just as a mother ought to be the doorway through which a child first sees Mary, mother of us all, so a father should be the portal through which the child first glimpses God, Creator and Father of us all.

Adorers of God

As for “bringing up children” there is only one way to do it: bring them up to God.

It often seems the biggest part of raising them is the moral and discipline part—bringing them up to be good or

bad, polite or ill-mannered. Now I do not wish to minimize the importance of morality, nor could I. But really morality ought to be an effect of religion and not the sum total of it.

We would not have such a terrific time with “good and evil” if we worked at making our children God-conscious and God-loving.

When I was a child my mother often said of me, “She is always good....She never gives me any trouble.” What my mother didn‟t know was that she had inspired such a love in me for her that I couldn‟t bear to do anything to offend her. I considered her feelings first, and far above my own. If she bought me a dress I didn‟t like, I would exclaim over it and admire it. I might be miserable wearing it but would have been more miserable if I had turned away from her gift and spoiled her pleasure in giving it to me. Interrupt play to run errands? Her wishes and needs and desires were more important to me than all the games and playmates in the world. Mind the younger children, help in the house? Naturally. Disobedience? It never occurred to me. The idea of disobeying would have been repulsive. I loved her and would suffer if she were hurt in any way. Serving her was as natural and as easy as breathing.

Cannot parents inspire in their children such a love of God that they will think only of pleasing Him, of serving Him and all this in a joyful, easy way?

Of course, there will always be the pressure on them (and us too) of the effects of original sin, so they are not going to be perfect or even near it. But God supplies the graces we need to counteract those effects. And once they have received Holy Communion they have a daily source of strength. There will be routines of prayer, even simple prayers, morning and night, grace at mealtimes. Later when they are ready for it they join in the family rosary.

The way to lead them is the way of love. God gave us ten commandments, most of which are “thou shalt not...” Yet He summarized them in just two, and these are “thou shalt love the Lord Thy God and love Thy neighbor as Thyself.” So we should teach them to love God and they will love His law, His Will. They will not be so often beset with temptation to evil when their hearts are intent on doing good.

And all this is only the beginning. We want them to become “adorers” of God. This is the easy part, believe it or not. We don‟t wait until they start school and are handed a catechism. It starts with their earliest years. While they are “under our feet” in the kitchen we go about preparing meals, doing the dishes, but talking to them of God, of the purpose of life, of the Redeemer Who opened the gates of Paradise for them. Children in their baptismal innocence have an unsmudged intelligence and can easily grasp the ideas in the Real Presence, the Holy Eucharist, the Incarnation.

When we tell them stories we need not neglect Goldilocks or Winnie-the-Pooh (and Winnie is good for laughs) but we should lean heavily on stories of the lives of the saints (how they love to hear about Francis of Assisi!) and incidents in the life of Christ. The nativity story is one they love (and play) the year round. They should learn hymns too. Most children enjoy singing. Hymns make good lullabies.

And in how many ways we can remind them of the power and majesty and goodness of God: in blue skies and white clouds, in rain, in snow, in the variety and quantity of snow-flakes, blades of grass, trees and leaves of trees, in every living thing about them. “See that great bridge that holds trains and cars and people...see how God has made men that they can build such things.” When we point out a boat or a house or other works of man it is always, “Wasn‟t God good to make men so they can do these things and do do them?”

A soul can spend a lifetime studying, contemplating, learning of God and still never exhaust itself. Our children can learn early to see the design of God in everything about them. They can so effortlessly become constantly recollected in God. How they will adore Him! And knowing Him and serving Him will be a joy not a drudge. Love makes all things possible. As they become true lovers of God they will not falter at adversities that beset them later. Sacrifice, self-denial, mortifications which invariably must be faced in life will not be met with resentment, frustration and neuroses.

Putting God first in their lives will do more toward making them normal, happy human beings than all the psychology books ever written. It will give them a right sense of values for all time and will be the base and foundation on which they stand. In the future too, whatever vocations and careers they pursue their life will have purpose and direction. All this is not intended as a mere piety pep talk. It is too vital to be dismissed as such.

Actually we have an obligation to do this much for our children. A glance at all the messy lives around us ought to quicken us at the task, for if ever a people have been diverted from God, we have been.

We will not consider at this time ourselves, the grown-ups. Let us draw a curtain of shame over that category for now. But what of the youngsters? ”Restless, O Lord!”

How can we look upon the tragedy of our future wives and mothers attending theatres and literally screaming in pseudo ecstasy at a singer? What do you think of the tender souls who live in make-believe worlds where Hollywood idols sate their dreams and desires? I recall a nine-year-old who came to our house and amidst sighs and limpid gesturings spoke of the god-like man she worshipped on the screen. These faraway mortals held her enraptured, body and soul. It was enough to sicken your heart and make you weep. As these children grow older they carry on in their imaginary world and confuse it with reality; through such a blur they transfer their affections to nearer mortals and new creatures. Boys and girls engage in adolescent but passionate romancing, have crushes on public characters of dubious repute, are obsessed with sports, amusements, cosmetics, clothes, books. I mean obsessed truly in the sense that these “creatures” are given time and consideration and devotion out of all normal proportions. But, it is said, they‟ll eventually marry and settle down. Indeed? And join our generation of divorce, re-marriage, broken homes, neurotic children?

Well, what can parents do? Restrict movie attendance? Be stricter in supervising their activities? These are methods of handling a disease. The right way is to prevent the disease from taking hold. Hence the purpose in having them God-conscious and God-loving.

For all these vain obsessions are only wild, weed-like growths on souls which should have been basking in the sun of God‟s light and bringing forth good fruit. And restless and dissatisfied they will be, wasting their lives, if all their growth is away from God for Whom they were created. And all their energies and talents and gifts will end in barrenness or in evil fruits.

Parents have indeed the obligation of telling their children the truth about life. And the truth about life is that we are made for God and will know no rest or happiness until we are centered in Him, till our love is brought to bear on Him.

And woe to us if our children must go through empty searching years, needlessly suffering turmoil and wasted pain only to discover when youth is gone and life is spent the happiness their hungering hearts had craved. Let it not be said of us that because we neglected to tell them from the start our children will someday discover the Divine Lover and cry out with remorse as did Augustine: “Too late have I loved Thee! Too late have I known thee!”

Now is the time to lead them to the Divine Lover. And as we feed and clothe their bodies let us give the best to their souls. Encourage frequent if not daily Communion that their souls be nourished with the Body of Christ and clothed with the raiment of God.

And if your children have those sensitive hearts that are stirred by the splendors of sunsets and moved by beautiful music to know a loneliness overpowering them and an ache within them, you can tell them the truth, that at such moments they are getting cloudy glimpses of the beauty their souls seek and only when they achieve complete union with their Maker will the loneliness be gone and the pain of longing gone with it.

Fill Heaven with Saints

This can mean only one thing, that our work is not done until death, until they are in heaven. So we may even still be at it in the next world if we arrive there before they do (which is the usual thing).

You see, it is not a tidy matter of dismissing our responsibility when they come of age in the world‟s count of years, when they marry, when they go their separate ways. The parish priest does not cross off his list those aged twenty-one and over, for his is a lifetime work with many souls. Ours is a lifetime work with a few specific ones.

Parents are often confronted with sickening failures in their grown-up children. A son turns out a drunkard, a daughter falls away from the Faith, another perhaps will enter into a bad marriage. What are we to do? Feel sorry for ourselves? Nag and scold them? Tell the neighbors and relatives our child (or children) is breaking our hearts?

Well, we should counsel and admonish them if it will do any good. But what we really must do is pray and sacrifice and do penance and make reparation—and in secret, unobtrusive ways. We must suffer for the souls of our children! The price of salvation is suffering. We should pay it, buying their souls with our pain and sorrow and even, when the time comes, our death.

Sounds rough? Hard to take? I‟ll admit it‟s a far cry from just washing, ironing and cooking for them.

But think of the Trappists and similar Orders, the cloistered nuns, the priests, the religious brothers and sisters all

over the world who are living lives of sacrifice, hard work and reparation for souls, for souls they very often do not know and will never meet this side of heaven. Is it too much to ask of us, that we do as much for the souls we brought into existence, our brothers and sisters in Christ whom we refer to as “our own flesh and blood”?

Or will we, mother and father, be Adam and Eve to our children as our first parents were to all of us? Will they lose Paradise because we would not win it for them?

And how to get them to heaven? It will depend even more on what we are than what we do. You have heard it said that we cannot give to others what we haven‟t got to give. And every teacher will admit he has always to be a page ahead of his students. So making saints of them means we must become saints ourselves. There‟s nothing fantastic in that.

But it does mean in forming their characters we‟ll have to straighten out our own. If they require chastisement, let‟s not balk at being at least equally severe with ourselves. While we are finding fault with them we can examine our own consciences—and being cheerful with it all! “Joy is the echo of God‟s life in us.”

Do you recall the story of the Cure of Ars who spent as much as eighteen hours a day in the confessional and how people flocked from all over France to him? How did he get that great power of healing souls? Just by sitting there hearing confessions all day? No. It was the remaining hours he spent before the Blessed Sacrament, the penances he inflicted on himself, the work he did on his own soul. He became a channel of God‟s grace. He emptied himself of self and left room only for God, and so God could work through him.

And so it is with us. Our “eighteen hours daily” are perhaps our actual day‟s work and activity but behind that must be the work of God. We too must become channels through which God‟s grace can flow to others, particularly our children. It means we must root out petty whims, faults, selfishness, self-centeredness, all our vices and vanities; clean out our hearts; empty ourselves of every despicable, worthless, nasty trait. It won‟t be easy. We may in fact be doing it for the rest of our lives and never quite complete the job. But we have to keep at it. We will be wells holding God‟s refreshing waters for our children. We must not let those waters be muddied or contaminated.

Have you ever seen a child present an awkward, ill-made product of his own handiwork as a gift to his parents? Poorly finished and smudged with finger marks it is, yet his parents understand the effort and motive behind it and the love it represents. Have you ever seen a child make such a present for his father? And mother first took it and cleaned and beautified it and wrapped it attractively before it was presented to father?

We, too, are but clumsy children with our limited intelligences and skill and we are trying to fashion these souls for God. But when the work is finished Mary will bring it to Him with us—but first she will add her own lovely finishes and we will hardly recognize the magnificent gift it becomes. And our loving Father will at last bring their souls to ultimate perfection. God always rewards good parents.

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HOW TO BE GOOD PARENTS

DONALD F. MILLER, C.SS.R.

Here are the principles, with some of the practical applications, that all parents must know and observe if they are to rejoice in the children whom God entrusts to their care.

It is not easy to be good parents today. One may go farther and say that it is never “easy” to be such, because parenthood begets very serious obligations, and fallen human nature rather instinctively rebels against being obliged to anything. Today it is especially difficult to be good parents because so many persons who have brought children into the world have taken the easy way out and evaded the obligations that parenthood imposed upon them.

It is good, therefore, to review the principles that underlie the obligations of parents toward their children, and to point out some of the practical applications that must be made of the principles by fathers and mothers. The fourth commandment of God reads: “Honour thy father and thy mother.” Implicit in this command, which is directed primarily to children, is the law that parents must rightly fulfill their obligations toward their children. To fulfill those obligations, parents must know them and ponder on them often.

Since there is so much abdication of parental responsibility today, with the result that patterns of wrong conduct are widely followed in the world, it is important that individual parents not only read the following principles and explanations for themselves, but that they get together with other Christian and Catholic parents and set up patterns of conduct that will oppose the fashions and standards followed by parents who don’t know or don’t care to know how rightly to exercise their parental authority. Groups of parents, therefore, should study and talk about these principles together, and encourage one another to put them into practice.

PRINCIPLE I.

The authority of parents is a delegation of the authority of God, transmitted to them by the very fact of their becom

ing parents, through which they are to direct their children first, toward heaven, and second, toward a useful and happy life in this world.

God cooperates with parents in bringing children into the world, but God does the major part. He creates an immortal human soul for every child and has supreme authority over that soul. This authority He delegates to the parents for the proper upbringing of the child.

Therefore the authority of parents over their children must be exercised with definite ends in view, and with a clear knowledge of the proper means to those ends.

The first end is always the salvation of the child’s soul. The secondary end is the living of a good and useful and happy life on earth.

The means are threefold: 1) a knowledge of God, attained through faith and reason, and of all that God has revealed to man; 2) observance of God’s laws, as made known through the teachings of Christ and His Church; 3) the use of prayer and the sacramental system Christ established as the means of growing in positive grace.

Leading a child toward its proper goals, through the right means, will require personal instruction, correction of faults, discipline of the will, and, at times, reasonable punishment.

PRINCIPLE II

The authority of parents will never be effective in directing a child properly unless it be exercised against the

background of manifest love.

God never commands human beings without at the same time showing His love for them. Indeed, all the commands of God are in some way expressions of His love. It was this love that inspired Him to go so far as to die for mankind.

Since the authority of parents is a delegation of the authority of God, its exercise must be accompanied by the same kind of love that God has shown to all His children. This love must be manifest so that the children will see that the same parents who command them love them whole-heartedly.

The love of parents is made manifest only through sacrifice, respect for the human nature of their children, companionship and a deep interest in the studies, the work, the play and the progress of their children. It does not injure the children by coddling them; it does not stunt them by unreasonable severity in its demands and punishments. It makes the children constantly aware that the parents want their happiness, both eternal and temporal, even when discipline and correction and punishment are required.

PRINCIPLE III.

The authority of parents will rarely be effectively exercised unless it is backed up by their good example.

In all moral and spiritual matters, the example of parents should be the first teacher of their children; explanations, commands, prohibitions, corrections are of little lasting value unless the good example is there.

Thus parents who rarely receive the sacraments, who are guilty of frequent profanity and even obscenity in speech, who often quarrel with each other, will accomplish little or nothing by commanding their children to do otherwise than they do. The children may obey for a while, at least when they are very young; but almost inevitably and eventually the children will follow the example of their parents and not their commands.

PRINCIPLE IV.

The authority of parents must be exercised with full recognition of the differences of treatment required by the

differences of temperament, sex and age in their children.

Every child born into the world is a distinct human personality, with its own particular disposition and temperament, with the special characteristics of its sex, and with a need for different kinds of treatment as it advances more and more toward maturity.

Basic to the needs of all children, however, is that they be trained to respect the authority of their parents from their earliest years. Parents who let their children have their own way throughout childhood will never win them to obedience in later years. It is hopeless to try to direct a child toward good and to rescue it from evil by beginning to exercise authority only when the child is advancing into its teens.

At the same time each child must be looked upon as an individual boy or girl, and is subject to growth and development requiring changes of approach on the part of parents as the child advances toward greater and greater maturity.

Thus the father will be on guard against trying to deal with his daughter in the same manner as he directs his sons; and the mother will beware of trying to mould a son’s character according to the same pattern as that of a daughter.

Thus both parents will study to learn the individual temperaments of their children and to direct them accordingly. They will come to realize that a moody child needs encouragement and the building up of self-confidence; an extrovert child needs discipline, order and frequent correction; a child with a tendency to want to dominate others needs praise and at the same time humility; a lazy or phlegmatic child needs frequent prods administered with patience and understanding. Despite all this no child can get along without respect for parental authority instilled at the earliest age.

As the child grows into its teens, the authority of parents gradually expresses itself more often in suggestions, directives and even wishes rather than in sharp commands. This will work out only if the children have always been trained to respect the authority of their parents and to recognize their love. Too many parents make the mistake of commanding a fifteen-year-old to do things in the same manner as they would a five-year-old child.

PRINCIPLE V.

The authority of father and mother must be mutually exercised, each contributing what is most natural to their

particular role.

The mutual exercise of parental authority means that neither one will abdicate authority, nor delegate to the other the making of all decisions concerning the direction, correction and punishment of the children. Fathers, in particular, do great harm to their children (and, incidentally, to their wives) who, in all problems and questions that arise concerning the children, say to them: “Let your mother decide.”

Each parent has something to contribute toward the proper development of a child. By the design of nature, a father leans toward justice and severity; the mother toward mercy and leniency. Both these shadings of authority are needed for the rounded development of the child. Children need to see the father and mother working together, complementing each other, in bringing them up. Above all, it is important that they never be given grounds for “playing” their father and mother against each other.

Therefore the father must permit his masculine sense of justice to be tempered at times by the mother’s leaning toward mercy; the mother must want her feminine leniency to be bolstered by the father’s instinct toward strictness. Yet decisions must appear to the children as coming from both parents, the one always supporting and upholding the other when the decision has been mutually made.

PRINCIPLE VI.

The authority of Christian parents must be exercised with full recognition of the fact that false, dangerous and bad

standards of conduct are approved or tolerated by many parents in the world today, and that Christian parents must band together to reject and resist all such standards.

The grave mistake of many Christian parents is to let themselves be swayed by customs, practices and permissions that are indulged by children who have parents “who don’t care,” or who are guided by wrong principles. They cannot resist the plaintive appeal of children: “Other parents allow these things; why shouldn’t they be allowed to me?”

Children, even in their teens, cannot be expected to make the distinction between the good and the bad, the dangerous and the harmless, in the customs that are prevalent around them. Indeed, they of all human beings are most apt to call upon the false principle that what is widely done is rightly done. At the same time, widespread experience proves that children want to be guided; they want to be told by their parents what they should do and not do.

Therefore parents are bound to use their own knowledge and experience, their own faith and principle, to guide and direct their children toward what is good and away from what is bad, no matter what the popular modes of juvenile conduct may be. And because the weight of false principle and bad example is so great, they need to get together with other parents like themselves, and to establish norms and rules that all will observe together. The effect will be that no child of Catholic parents will be able to say:

“You are the only parents in the world who ask or demand such-and-such of me.”

A number of clear examples of the contradiction between what is popular or widely permitted and what is right can

be set down. Under each heading below the wrong principle or practice will be set down followed by the right.

1. Recreation outside the home.

Wrong: Parents need not be concerned about the circumstances in which their children seek recreation outside the

home.

Right: Parents are bound to know and pass judgment on 1) where their children (including teen-agers) go for recreation; 2) with whom they go; 3) how long they will be away from home. In a rightly run home, definite rules regarding these three points will be laid down and enforced for the children from their earliest years to their late teens.

2. Recreation in the home.

Wrong: Parents are justified in discouraging gatherings or parties of their children with their friends in their own

home. If on occasion such parties are permitted, the parents need not be bothered with supervising or chaperoning them in any way.

Right: Parents have an obligation to welcome the friends of their children into their home for informal or formal gatherings, because this is the only adequate way in which they can get to know the kind of company their children keep. Further, they are obliged (this word should be unnecessary: it were better said, “they should desire”) to chaperone and take part in such gatherings, and enforce definite rules concerning modesty, decency and propriety at all times. “Crashing” should be prohibited, and break-up times agreed upon and observed.

3. Company-keeping

Wrong: There is no harm, and perhaps some good, in permitting a youngster in the eighth grade or in the three

early years of high school, to keep steady company, that is regularly to have “dates” exclusively with a certain individual.

Right: Steady company-keeping is lawful only when marriage is considered possible and desirable within a reasonable period of time, which may be estimated at about a year. There are two reasons for this. The first and most important is that steady company-keeping without prospect of marriage within a reasonable time practically always leads in due course to sins of impurity. The second reason is that no child can acquire a worthwhile high school education if it is distracted from its studies by an immature love-affair.

On this principle parents are bound to prohibit steady company-keeping to their children at least until the latter part of their senior year in high school. Even then it may be permitted only if the teen-ager is willing, with the seriously considered advice of parents, to face the prospect of marriage shortly after the completion of high school. If a high school senior seriously plans on going to college or university, the parents should inform him (or her) that steady company-keeping in high school represents a decision to give up all thought of college or university, and that they (the parents) will enforce that decision.

4. Sex-instruction

Wrong: Parents may trust that their children will learn all they need to know about sex from their teachers, their

companions, and from books and magazines.

Right: Parents have the primary responsibility for seeing to it that their children are not only properly informed on matters of sex, but prepared to meet the problems that will arise in this matter.

On no point in the upbringing of children, is it more important today that Christian and Catholic parents inform and train their children properly than in the matter of sex. On no point should they be more aware of the false principles their children may learn from companions and bad reading than here. For the task involved they should prepare themselves by well-directed Catholic reading and study, and by discussions with other responsible Catholic parents.

There are many other topics on which a false or dangerous principle for parents might be set down, and true norms succinctly stated. Some such topics are 1) the use of the family car; 2) money and allowances for children; 3) the use of alcohol; 4) the taking of jobs by children and the disposition of the income from such jobs; 5) proper attitudes toward school authorities, and toward the pastor and the parish church. Serious thinking about these matters, and discussions from other parents, against the background of the principles set down above, will reveal to them what sort of program will be to the best eternal and temporal interests of their children.

Imprimi Potest:
John N. McCormick, C.SS.R. Provincial, St. Louis Province, Redemptorist Fathers

May 18, 1959

Imprimatur:

St. Louis, May 22, 1959  Joseph E. Ritter Archbishop of St. Louis