The conditional nature of parental authority: Duty, failure, and the state as guardian

“ The law's concept of the family rests on a presumption that parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life's difficult decisions. More important, historically it has recognized that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children. ”

“ It is natural for children to love their parents, and if parents deal with their little ones in love and kindness they can make home the most desirable place on earth to them.
To rule by physical force is not government. It is a most pitiful sight to see a child fear and tremble before a parent's stern looks and cross words. There is a way, though but few have found it, of mingling tenderness with firmness that demands obedience in respect and love. It brings a joy to the parents' hearts to behold their child obeying willingly. ”

“ The duty of parents to provide for the upbringing of their children is one prescribed, not only by nature and morality, but also by the laws of human society. And yet this duty is not directly established by law; although it seems possible that children might be able to enforce by legal process the duty of their parents to exercise their parental authority in accordance with accepted rules. ”

“ Let us examine the duties of the parents at these different periods of paternal authority.
There is, to begin with, a general duty, which overrules the whole life of the parents as well as of the children, and which is independent of the latter’s age: it is the duty of love. Parents must love their children; it is the foundation of all the rest. It may perhaps be objected that love is a natural feeling and cannot be a duty; that the heart is not subject to the will; that one may love or not love, according as one is by nature so constituted ”

“ There are mistaken parents, ignorant parents, a few indifferent parents, even, as one in a thousand, callous parents; but the good that is done upon the earth is done, under God, by parents, whether directly or indirectly.
Parents, who recognise that their great work is to be done by the instrumentality of the ideas they are able to introduce into the minds of their children, will take anxious thought as to those ideas of God which are most fitting for children, and as to how those ideas may best be conveyed. Let us consider an idea which is just now causing some stir in people’s thoughts. ”

“ Again, it often happens, for example, that only the father is to blame, and yet the mother cannot be permitted to exercise her parental authority, but the child must be removed from its home, because in no other way can the harmful influence of the father be overcome. There are worthy parents who, simply from an excessive blind affection for their children, fail to bring them up properly; there are worthy working-class parents who have positively no time to attend satisfactorily to the upbringing of their children. ”

“ The child ought to love his mother before he knows that it is his duty to love her. If the voice of natural affection be not strengthened by habit and by care, it will grow dumb even in childhood; and thus the heart dies, so to speak, before it is born. Thus from the outset we are beyond the pale of nature.
There is an opposite way by which a woman goes beyond it; that is, when, instead of neglecting a mother's cares, she carries them to excess; when she makes her child her idol. She increases and fosters his weakness to prevent him from feeling it. ”

“ In exceptional cases, where the parents for physical or moral reasons fail in their duty towards their children, the State as guardian of the common good, by appropriate means shall endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child. ”

“ Once more, the authority of parents rests on a secure foundation only as they keep well before the children that it is deputed authority; the child who knows that he is being brought up for the service of the nation, that his parents are acting under a Divine commission, will not turn out a rebellious son. ”

“ In the modern State, the following ideas as to parental authority are generally prevalent. Parental authority involves duties as well as rights. Our laws give rights to parents only in order to enable them to fulfil their duties. They are, in a sense, plenipotentiaries of the State, entrusted with the duty of bringing up their children in a state of bodily, mental, and moral health, and of ensuring that these children shall develop in such a way that they will be useful to society. ”

“ LOVE seems to resume all the obligations of parents toward their offspring; certainly, it directs all their actions, and they fulfil these obligations ill or well according to the quality of that love. But love is not sufficient; love is of two kinds, the right and the wrong; nothing good comes of an affection that is not properly ordered. In itself, parental love is natural, instinctive; therefore it is not meritorious to any high degree. But there is much merit in the proper kind of parental affection, because it requires sacrifice. ”

“ In one sense, all young beings are unloving; in another, they are as vessels filled, brimming over with love seeking an outlet. This girl would watch her mother about a room, walk behind her in the streets—adoringly. Such intense worship of their parents is more common in children than we imagine. A boy of five years was asked what he thought the most beautiful thing in the world. “Velvet,” he replied, with dreamy eyes, evidently thinking of his mother in a velvet gown. His parents are the greatest and wisest, the most powerful, and the best people within the narrow range of the child’s world. ”

“ The mother who makes her growing-up daughter take the out-of-door exercise she needs, is acting within her powers. The father of quiet habits, who discourages society for his young people, is considering his own tastes, and not their needs, and is making unlawful use of his authority.
Again, the authority of parents, though the deference it begets remains to grace the relations of parents and child, is itself a provisional function, and is only successful as it encourages the autonomy, if we may call it so, of the child. ”

“ The foundation of parental authority lies in the fact that parents hold office as deputies; and that in a two-fold sense. In the first place, they are the immediate and personally appointed deputies of the Almighty King, the sole Ruler of men; they have not only to fulfil his counsels regarding the children, but to represent his Person; his parents are as God to the little child; and, yet more constraining thought, God is to him what his parents are; he has no power to conceive a greater and lovelier personality than that of the royal heads of his own home ”

“ Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any peculiar right of nature, but only as he is guardian of his children, that when he quits his care of them, he loses his power over them, which goes along with their nourishment and education, to which it is inseparably annexed; and it belongs as much to the foster-father of an exposed child, as to the natural father of another. So little power does the bare act of begetting give a man over his issue; if all his care ends there, and this be all the title he hath to the name and authority of a father. ”

“ Mother-love is not Sufficient for Child-training––Some parents may consider all this as heavy hearing; that even to 'think on these things' is enough to take the joy and spontaneousness out of their sweet relationship; and that, after all, parents' love and the grace of God should be sufficient for the bringing-up of children. ”

“ The beautiful principles of kindergarten teaching are frequently misapplied in the too conciliatory and self-denying methods of the well-meaning mamma. Kindness, politeness, constant love, and all due consideration the child should have; but justice is as important to him as affection. It must always be remembered that the mother's love is not an end in itself, nor the expression of it a virtue in itself. ”

“ Having seen that it does not rest with the parents to use, or to forego the use of, the authority they hold, let us examine the limitations and the scope of this authority. In the first place, it is to be maintained and exercised solely for the advantage of the children, whether in mind, body, or estate. And here is room for the nice discrimination, the delicate intuitions, with which parents are blessed. The mother, who makes her growing-up daughter take the out-of-door exercise she needs, is acting within her powers. ”

“ A child who is taught from the first the delights of giving and sharing, of loving and bearing, will always spend himself freely on others, will love and serve, seeking for nothing again; but the child who recognises that he is the object of constant attention, consideration, love and service, becomes self-regardful, self-seeking, selfish, almost without his fault, so strongly is he influenced by the direction his thoughts receive from those about him. ”

“ It is to be measured, like every other natural function, by its use.
When a child is reared in an atmosphere of unreasoning devotion and constant surrender, he grows up to expect it, and to carry a sense of grievance if he does not get it. [197] The natural tendency of the mother to love her own young is strong in us,—the maternal passion; but, like all passions, it needs conscientious and rational restraint. The human soul has grown to such a stage of development that we are capable of loving and serving great numbers of people. ”

“ The child who is choked at home by an artificial environment and chained by the commands of his parents will develop into a crooked, blasted man. Dr. Montessori told me that her first word to American mothers is this:—
“Free your children.”
Every child is born with an unlimited capacity for good. His impulse is to do the good thing, but we so hedge him about with objects which he must not touch and places which he must not explore and inaccuracies of speech which confuse his understanding, that he rebels. With the force of [46] a giant, the baby uses his will to break our will. ”

“ More likely than not they follow in this important matter their custom in matters of lesser import—of employing a method directly opposed to the method of their own parents, and employing it simply because it is directly opposed. This is but too apt to be their interpretation of the phrase "modernity in child nurture." But the children learn the lesson. They learn the other great and fundamental lessons of life, too, and learn them well, from these American fathers and mothers who are so friendly and companionable and sympathetic with them. ”

“ Ill-usage of children may be the act either of relatives or of strangers. Among the relatives, we have first of all the unmarried mother; secondly, the natural father; thirdly, the stepmother; fourthly, the lawful parents. Among strangers, we have chiefly to consider teachers and foster-parents. ”

“ Parents who maltreat their own children must at once be deprived of their parental authority, for unless this is done, after they have been punished, the parents will be likely to maltreat the child more than ever, merely taking more care to avoid discovery. ”

“ If any offender whose conduct against a child has proved him to be incapable of exercising with propriety parental authority, the powers of a guardian, the powers of a foster-parent, the duties of a teacher, it is essential to deprive him of these powers without delay; and this should be done, not only in the interests of the particular child, but in the interests of all children. ”

“ We have recognized, of course, that there are limits to the constitutional right of parents to have custody of, or to participate in decisions affecting, their children. If a parent has relinquished the opportunity to develop a relationship with the child, and his or her only link to the child is biological, the Constitution does not require a State to allow parental participation. ”

“ The care of the property and the exercise of the powers of a legal representative are associated with the exercise of parental authority, and there is an obvious danger, in many instances, that a thoughtless mother might utilise the child’s property—more especially an allowance for maintenance made by the father, or a capital sum paid by the latter to provide for the child—in her own interest, instead of in that of the child, and that in this way the provision made by the child’s natural father would be unprofitably employed. ”

“ And this is well; the child, as well as the adult, should have the right of protection against abuse. Nevertheless, the theories which would relegate the whole education and care of the child to the state must be regarded as too extreme. Whatever disadvantages there may be in the government of parents, especially at the present day when the education of women is still so inadequate, there is yet nothing which the child cannot better miss out of his education than the influence of parental love, the lack of which no state institution can ever supply. ”

“ It is the primal impulse to habits of thought which children must owe to their parents; and, as a man's thought and action Godward, is
'The very pulse of the machine,' the introduction of such primal ideas as shall impel the soul to God is the first duty and the highest privilege of parents. Whatever sin of unbelief a man is guilty of, are his parents wholly without blame?
First Approaches to God––Let us consider what is commonly done in the nursery in this respect. No sooner can the little being lisp than he is taught to kneel up in his mother's lap, and say 'God bless . ”

“ It may seem wearisome to say so often over that the example of the parents is the chief influence in the training of the child; but how can I help saying it when the fact is so? Is it not true that when the father of a family comes home and talks before his children, every word sinks into their minds? If he talks banter—banter so broad that his elder children laugh and understand, how should the little one on its mother's lap fail to be perplexed and misled? ”

“ Are there quite enough parents like the father of a friend into whose young hands at leave-taking from home his father placed a Bible and a copy of the poems of Burns with the parting word,—Love and cling to both, but if you must give up the Bible cling to Burns. But verily we can give nothing more to our children than clothes and food and money until we remember to make something of ourselves. It is not easy for the stream of domestic influence to rise higher than the parental level. ”

“ Now, no less than this is what we mean when we say, Education is a Discipline. Where parents fail, the poor soul has one further chance in the discipline of life; but we must remember that, while it is the nature of the child to submit to discipline, it is the nature of the undisciplined man to run his head in passionate wilfulness against the circumstances that are for his training; so that the parent who wilfully chooses to leave his child to be “broken in” by the schoolmaster or by life leaves him to a fight in which all the odds are against him. ”

“ Moreover, the parental authority and a father’s rights over his children, founded on his relation as the loving and affectionate author of their being, admits not of being set forth and comprised in any exact and positive formularies. And even if the social community occasionally steps in to determine by legislation the limits, and in certain points gives its sanction to the domestic rights and authority of a father, as founded on love and feeling, this is only done, nevertheless, with a view to guard against and to remedy the possible abuse of so natural a right and relation. ”

“ The mother does her duty by her children as best she can. The father does his duty by his children. But we do not do our duty by our children. The relation of the State to the child is little thought of, much less understood. We have discussed it only as an alternative to the parental relation, involving the removal of the child from the home and family, and the substitution of civic for domestic care. Such a proposal naturally excites the hot opposition of parental love and instinct, and cannot stand. ”

“ But the civilised human parent lives as part of an elaborate society,—a State; and, as a member of the State, he holds a new relation to his child—she holds a new relation to her child: they—and they are the State—hold a new relation to their children. This is what we so generally ignore.
The individual parents do their individual duty fairly well; but the collective parents, who constitute society, fail shamefully in their collective duties. ”

“ Here is where our parents, who constitute society, fail to see the nature and extent of their work. They have an exaggerated idea of "parental responsibility" to the child, and no idea at all of social responsibility to the child. That social development which has enlarged the mind and soul of the beast-savage to our present capacity for love and service we still imagine to be purely parental, and endeavour to concentrate [281] it all on our own children, failing utterly in our duty to each other's children. ”

“ In order that parents may fulfil their obligations towards their children, the law of nature itself confers on them the requisite authority and the right to look after their children until these can provide for themselves. It would, then, be against natural justice if children were removed from their parents' control or if there were any interference with the parental authority as long as it is rightly exercised. ”

“ There may be cases in which the parents are quite blameless, and yet in the interests of the child it may be absolutely necessary to abrogate the parental authority; or, in similar cases, it may be necessary, for educational purposes, to remove the child from its home. ”

“ By associating natural results with action, and by adjusting punishments on the same ground, parents may early begin that judicious abdication of authority which is finally to lead to self-government and the evolution of truly moral beings. It is a point of profound wisdom to let this abdication keep always a step in advance of the child's demand for freedom. The chapters on special problems in nursery management deserve no less careful reading. Mrs. Winterburn's book contains much to commend. We believe that every word of it is true. In style and outward dress it is also attractive. ”