Family duty

“ At any rate, the strict duty is to confer with the parents, consult their superior wisdom, and delay as much as possible a final resolve. These principles once set down, it is certain that, on the other hand, one should not, to obey one’s parents, follow a profession one felt no capacity for whatsoever. [Pg 219] There the duties toward society and toward one’s self take precedence of the family duties. ”

“ That is to say, getting a group of children up to adult independence and saving the community most of the intimate duties of care of the aged and of the weak, while it calls upon the man-head of the family 281for greater activity in his special line, calls upon the woman-head of the family for a general and personal service as a primary duty. ”

“ The members of a family all have duties and responsibilities towards one... The members of a family all have duties and responsibilities towards one another and to the family as a whole, and these duties and responsibilities vary from member to member because of their natural relationships. The parents have the inescapable duty to educate their children—but not vice versa; the children have the duty to obey their parents—the parents do not obey the children; the mother—not the father—bears the children, nurses them in babyhood, and is thus their first educator ”

“ When death comes into a family it ought to be improved for the reforming of what is amiss in the family: when relations are taken away from us we are put upon enquiry whether, in some instance or other, we are not out of the way of our duty, that we may return to it. ”

“ The only duty you owe is to yourself and to your family.
The duty you owe to yourself is to do the best you can, and the duty you owe to your family is to endeavor to make them happy.
Emancipate yourself from these stultifying creeds, and protect your children from the contamination of religion.
Get off your knees, stand erect, and look the whole world in the face.
Get all the joy and happiness you can out of life.
Enjoy the fruits of your labor and waste it not upon the myth of heaven; support not the parasites of God.
[Pg 63]
Do not knowingly harm another human being; ”

“ I must now return to the affairs of my wife’s family, and to my mother-in-law, who had become at length reconciled to me as a member of the family, and almost looked upon me as a son. It appears to be a kind of law in nature or society, that one individual of a family must be sacrificed, in one way or another, for the benefit of the rest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We may look about us and see what it is and can do for men and women. Few, perhaps, are standing on the heights of their own being when they build the family altar. Yet in the love and sacrifice of plain and unknown fathers who cheerfully toil for their loved ones, in the patient endurance of simple-hearted mothers who give so much of their lives in ready service to husband and family, in the frolic-joy and eager activity of ordinary children whose only dower is the free and happy service of their parents, is the fruit and the promise of the human family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Instead of this, God ordains that parents shall have a home of their own, where they can [56] have their children to themselves, to train them up in love and peace and plenty. And one main support of this blessed institution of family and home is, those domestics who are hired to do the chief labours of the family. Just take away from this country all the cooks, chambermaids, waiters, washers, and house cleaners, and what would be the result? The fathers could not leave their business to do the family work, the mothers would not have strength to do it, and the family state would be broken up. ”

“ In the common course of human affairs families are separated, and parents removed by death; but so long as brothers and sisters live, they might, if bound by true affection, remain to be a blessing and a help to each other; and should their parents be spared to them beyond the usual period of family union, what richer harvest could they reap, what more entire fulfilment of their hopes, what reward more precious for "all their sorrows, all their cares," than to see their children happy in them, and in each other? ”

“ The father then is to set the example of self-sacrificing love and devotion; and the mother, of Christian obedience when it is required. Every boy is to be trained for his future domestic position by labor and sacrifices for his mother and sisters. It is the brother who is to do the hardest and most disagreeable work, to face the storms and perform the most laborious drudgeries. In the family circle, too, he is to give his mother and sister precedence in all the conveniences and comforts of home life. ”

“ But every duty may sometimes claim such sacrifices. Parental duty does so perpetually. How many thousands of mothers and fathers toil all their days and give up health and every enjoyment for their children’s interests! Why should not filial duties likewise exact equal sacrifice? The entire devotion to the parent when the parent really needs it, and the constant devotion of as much care as the parent requires,—this, and nothing short of this, seems to me to be the standard of filial duty. ”

“ But now that there has been such a change, especially in the United States, in the constitution of the family, when the child has taken into its own hands that authority which was once the prerogative of the parent, it is time that we should recognize the altered condition of things, and give to the children of the present day that assistance and counsel in the government and judicious training of their parents which was once so freely offered to the latter when their offspring held a subordinate position in the family and household. ”

“ It is hardly possible to be mistaken in taking this fight to be a ceremonial, if playful, assertion of the claim of the mother's kinsfolk to the child as one of themselves, and the father's payment to be the quieting of their claim and the securing of his own position as head of his own family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This requires every one to be orderly, good tempered, serviceable, unselfish, sincere, forbearing, forgiving, and kind. Obedience to father and mother is the very first thing on which the welfare and happiness of a family depends, and that which is above all things necessary to make a happy home. ”

“ We are under the highest and sternest obligation to discover the laws of the family, those social laws which are determined by its nature and purpose, to find right standards for family life, to discriminate between the things that are permanent and those that are passing, between those we must conserve and those we must discard, to be prepared to fit children for the finer and higher type of family life that must come in the future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just as many aunts and uncles, and some papas and mammas, too, are occasionally criticised by those younger members of the family who are prone to be very caustic as to the mode certain burdens are borne, the weight of which has never distressed their own shoulders. And this, not from any deficiency of affection, but simply through a habit which, in the levity of our day, has become popular, and taught us to think little of the ties of parentage, and call a father a Governor. ”

“ Neither does he tell us to honour father and mother, because we owe them all such reverence, as from them we have derived our being, and to them are indebted for all the care and affection with which they have tended and watched over our infancy; but because He has himself constituted the relation of parent and child, and ordained parental affection and filial duty as the means of promoting our welfare in time and in eternity. ”

“ The family principle is the point at which both the religious and educational life of a people centres, and about which it revolves. It is a force in comparison with which every sovereign’s command appears powerless. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now when a father that hath children, hath servants also, the children, not by the right of the child, but by the natural indulgence of the parents, are such freemen. And the whole, consisting of the father or mother, or both, and of the children, and of the servants, is called a family, wherein the father or mother of the family is sovereign of the same, and the rest, both children and servants equally, subjects. ”

“ Certain newspapers commend the example for our imitation, but God forbid that we should ever lose faith in the blessedness of family life. Parents who hold their children as, at the same time, a public trust and a divine trust, and who recognise the authority they hold as deputed authority, not to be trifled with, laid aside, or abused—such parents preserve for the nation the immunities of home, and safeguard the privileges of their order. ”

“ It is therefore not only necessary to the peace and tranquillity of the family that his duties should be defined as clearly as possible, but this assistance is due to him as a mark of that filial affection which should not be permitted entirely to die out, simply because the parent has voluntarily assumed a position of inferiority and subjection. ”

“ Where there is a family of children more than large enough to make good the parent's share in life's ongoing stream, or where physical, mental, or moral peculiarities demand special attention to one child or more, or where aged, delicate, or incompetent members of the family circle call for special consideration, or where the environment does not provide, or the income cannot pay for elaborate aids to domestic comfort from without, the average conscientious housemother must give the best of strength and the most of time in the service of the private family for many years of life. ”

“ In some there were four families—the grand-parents, the parents, the eldest son with his wife and family, and a daughter or two with their husbands and children. The eldest son, who inherits the house and land, almost invariably brings his wife to his father's house, where she often becomes little better than a slave to her mother-in-law. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With this dominating purpose clearly in mind we are prepared to ask, What are the elements of family life which among the changes of today we need most carefully to preserve in order to maintain efficiency in character development? In days when the outer shell of domestic arrangements changes, when readjustments are being made in the organization of the family, what is there too precious to lose, so worthy and essential that we waste no time when seeking to maintain it? ”

“ "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." ”