Family affairs

“ In this way, and by regularly causing the letters which he himself received to circulate among other members of the family, he aided in keeping alive that union and interest in family affairs which so often cease when the children grow up and become scattered. ”

“ The sons bred in such a family will be moral men, of steady habits; and the daughters, if the mother shall have performed the duties of a parent in the superintendence of their education, as faithfully as she has done those of a wife, will each be a treasure to her husband ”

“ In the relations implied in the names husband and wife, [228] father and mother, parents and children, brothers and sisters, we have the truth of the family. We know the family and can only know the family through these relations. Take the relations away, and you take the family away. There cannot be a husband without a wife, a father without a mother, parents without children, and children without a father and a mother. Abiding in these relations, which make up the truth of the family, wrapt up with them and growing out of them, are the laws of right which the will is to obey. ”

“ Thirty years we have been beneath the opportunities and duties of free manhood, which is to say that for thirty years we have been associated with the family institution as husband, as wife, as parent, as sister, as brother, as son, and as daughter. ”

“ So let the father and mother treat each other and their children, and you will, my readers, obtain a noble reward in the increasing happiness and comfort of your family circles—in the manliness which will belong to the sons—in the mental and moral graces which will adorn the daughters. The family will thus become the school of virtue and the bulwark of society—the reciprocal influence of brothers and sisters thus trained will be of untold power on each other's character. ”

“ For you are fully aware, Venerable Brothers, that the governing principle of family life has, in accordance with the requirements of natural law, its basis in the indissoluble union of husband and wife, and its superstructure in the duties and rights of parents and children, and of masters and servants towards each other. ”

“ Have these solid, excellent people aught to say against the faithful devotion of a wife, or the patient tenderness of a mother, which are corner-stones of the family, as the family is the corner-stone of all true civilization? ”

“ Perhaps when the work has been thus lightened and made less coarse, families may find "help," in the true sense, among their relatives, or others in need of a home, who would be members of the family circle. ”

“ It would lead us too far to insist on the enormous advantage of married life for public morality, for the prevention and repression of crime, and even for the welfare of the State, the soundest foundation of which is family life. Each family is a little community in itself, with the father at the head as king, and the mother as queen. ”

“ When sons encourage father, the family seems to be prosperous,
And it likely to be accomplish’d, when the youngers strengthen elders.
153. While two ploughs set up, family is harmoniz’d,
When a household is to be ruin’d, keeping two wives. ”

“ So that we all confess, by calling them wise, how wise it is to help each other. Consider a family, again. In order that a family may be happy and prosperous, all the members of it must bear each other’s burdens. If the father only thought of himself, and the mother of herself, and each of the children did nothing but take care of themselves, would not that family come to misery and ruin? ”

“ The responsibilities of a family should be understood, and the wife regarded in her utilitarian aspect as a keeper of the home, as a mother, and as a guardian of the home comforts; marriage itself, as the sacred garden of the future of mankind, in which each party to the contract has the privilege of contributing to that future. ”

“ Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life. ”

“ At any rate, just as many men "keep their religion in their wife's name," so, many fathers, although successfully appealed to as final authority in larger concerns of family order, leave the details of character-drill of all their younger children in the hands of the mother. ”

“ Moreover, the sentiment which governs parents and grandparents in all that relates to matrimonial conventions is an imperishable sentiment, closely allied to the very existence of civilized societies and springing from the spirit of family. ”

“ The husband and father, working hard and presently accumulating enough for ease in his particular station of life, suddenly finds himself supporting, with perhaps all the money he can scrape together, a distant and completely detached family. ”

“ The part that the family elders once played in settling vital questions of adjustment within the marriage bond has now, for the most part, to be undertaken for consideration and decision by the young people themselves. ”

“ In this little volume we have a picture, too, of what the world would call a happy family, in which a naturally strong, honest woman is shrivelled into a mere echo of her husband, and the popular sentiment of the class to which she belongs. ”

“ In visiting the middle and higher classes of society, the same family compact is observable, and the mother of the family continues always the mother and the head; her gentle reign lasting with her valued life, and the love and respect of those around her increasing with her years. ”

“ Each family's shaded world echoes its procreators' familial, psychosocialeconomic, religious and experiential breadth, closely resembled or distorted. Two persons, perhaps more, usually husband and wife, bring shaded views together in some combination or balance that becomes the "stuff," the authority, of {41} their children's worlds. ”

“ In considering these literate definitions, we can see that they apply to the situation of the current traditional family as well, in which father and mother both work, in which a child may live with and be cared for by a parent's second or third spouse, in which distance from or lack of blood relations calls for ad hoc relatives. ”

“ If a father, for instance, had a large, extensive family, his object would be to do them good, to promote their interest and happiness, to put into their hands power, knowing that they could not accomplish much alone, and that they would have to take or obtain assistance from that family. ”

“ But from the point where we now stand we see clearly that there is a third factor to which these are altogether subordinate—I mean the family. For the family is the immediate agent in the production and rearing of children; and this, as we have seen, is the end of society. ”

“ Have you not known instances where a man comes into, and settles down with, a family, till by and by he becomes a member of the family and has a recognised place in the household and he says with a smile, "Cut off from you, where can I go even inspite of occasional differences and superficial disturbances?" ”

“ In our own country, families are usually small, parents and their immediate offspring, with the attendants and belongings which naturally gather to a household, and, let it not be forgotten, form part of the family. ”

“ If you, my dear, live to be at the head of a family, I hope you will not only avoid all injurious treatment of your domestics, but behave to them with that courtesy and good breeding, which will heighten their respect as well as their affection. If, on any occasion, they do more than you have a right to require, give them, at least, the reward of seeing that they have obliged you. ”

“ If the father and mother each "gang their ain gait," and decide for business reasons or from personal preference to live in separate places, perhaps far apart from each other, then which one is to have the child or children? ”

“ Early widowed, the young mother herself may have to earn her children's bread. Or the husband may become crippled, or an invalid, or he may turn out a drunkard and a spendthrift. In any of these circumstances, the responsibility and the burden of supporting the entire family usually falls upon the wife. ”

“ The family, which the fiercest blasts of the revolutionary tempest in the last century had left untouched, is, in our day, radically assailed in its two essential foundations, marriage and inheritance. ”

“ I would advise you sedulously to avoid the whole family; you will find all intercourse with them irksome and comfortless: such as the father appears at once, the wife and the son will, in a few more meetings, appear also. ”

“ If we examine our terms of relationship, we find that those applied to individual persons and those used in a narrow and well-defined sense are just those in which the family is intimately concerned. The terms father, mother, husband and wife, brother and sister, are limited to members of the family of the speaker, and the terms father-, mother-, brother-, and sister-in-law to the members of the family of the wife or husband in the same narrowly restricted sense. ”

“ Today we see the narrowing effects of custom. The Sons in a family are taught and urged to develop their business tact, to learn a trade, to become independent, to mingle freely in the world of business. The daughters in a family are kept under the authority of the parents ‘til they pass under the authority of a husband. They are taught to make the most of their books and look out for a good catch, that is, a husband able to support them. ”

“ His kind, little wife, two younger sons, and the young wife of the eldest son, constitute the family; a quiet, kind, hospitable family, over which death however has lately cast its shadow. Here too the mothers have sorrowed most ”

“ "Of course you do, child," said mother. "Families were made to cling together, and stand by each other in every circumstance of life—joy or sorrow. Of course you need your family." ”

“ All these specialties are essential to social progress, and all are linked to family life in general, but none of them is particularly related to any one family group of one father, one mother, and their children. ”

“ I think I was well brought up, for my father and mother were of one mind regarding the care of the family. ”

“ After enumerating and inculcating in the same manner all the duties of the day, the conduct to be observed toward every member of the family—father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister, and brother-in-law, and the children of them—we find a very minute code of conduct set forth in regard to neighbours and acquaintances. The young wife is especially warned against gossip, against listening to any stories about what happens in other people’s houses, and against telling anybody what goes on within her own. ”

“ The truth is, not only must the bond between man and wife be made subject to a reasonable consideration of the welfare of the parties concerned and of the community, but the whole family bond as well. ”

“ While the family formed the social unit the interests of husband and wife were bound so closely together, that neither could gain or suffer without the other immediately sharing the loss or advantage. ”

“ These questions, so far as they apply, are put to each member of the family above the age of eight years. Should the husband be away, all the inquiries concerning him are made of the wife. If both parents are absent, the questions concerning them are put to their children! ”

“ Many volumes have been written upon the history of marriage, or rather of the family, since, as one historian justly puts it, "marriage has its source in the family rather than the family in marriage." [2] In all these studies the influence of law, of custom, of self-interest, and of economic pressure, is shown to have molded the institution of marriage into curious shapes and forms, some grievous to be borne. ”

“ The whole story is redolent of the finer side of ancient forms of familial duty, the man being rich and generous enough to take on his more remote relative's responsibilities, the young widow being sweet and charming enough to capture the interest of the rich man even before he knows who she is, and the mother-in-law showing statesmanship of the highest order in managing the affair, together with such fine character of her own that all respect and love her. ”

“ Now the household remains so long childless that it is very common to find the wife's mother a permanent member of the household, being retained for companionship! Even the mature family contains but few children, and this in the best agricultural parts of the country. ”

“ This fact can be easily explained as to a great extent a natural consequence of the necessary conditions of family life. Brothers and sisters possess claims upon the attention and affection of the loved parent (especially when that parent is the mother) which are apt to conflict seriously with one another and may on occasion be felt by the respective claimants to be almost if not quite as irksome and exorbitant as those of the other parent, whose competition with the child in this respect we have already noted. ”

“ Even where they have a family, the feeling is apt to be less tender to the children, who were not the first thought in marriage, but only an inevitable incident, so to speak, than is the case in countries where the perpetuation of a family, the constitution of a home, have been the first thought. ”

“ Duties relating to the families of others.—We have seen above what are the duties of man in his family; there remains to be said a few words touching the duties towards the families of others. One may fail in these duties either by violating the conjugal bond, which is adultery ”

“ Where father and mother sit at the head and foot of the table, their sons with their wives and their children each in his or her place, often to the number of twenty souls—all living under one roof, one name, and one bond of family unity—there is likely to be a great similarity of feeling upon all questions of family pride, especially among people who discuss everything with vehemence, from European politics to the family cook. ”