Family values

“ Strong families are the foundation of society. Through them we pass on our traditions, rituals, and values. From them we receive the love, encouragement, and education needed to meet human challenges. Family life provides opportunities and time for the spiritual growth that fosters generosity of spirit and responsible citizenship. ”

“ Children catch the spirit of social love and idealism in the family. Where men and women are deeply concerned with all that makes the world better for lives, better for babies and mothers, for workers, and, above all, for the values of the spirit gained through leisure, opportunities, and higher incentives; where the family is more concerned with folks than with furniture ”

“ The small social organization, the family circle of from three members to even a dozen, bound by ties of affection, is the one great, efficient school, training youth to live in social terms.
Thirdly, the family sets spiritual values first. Our age especially needs men and women who think in terms of spiritual values, who rise above the measures of pounds and dollars and weigh life by personal qualities and worth. That is precisely what the home does. It prizes most highly the helpless, economically worthless infant; it measures every member by his personal character, his affectional worth. ”

“ That character is formed and shaped from a child's earliest days through the love and guidance of family. Families help children understand the difference between right and wrong and the importance of making good choices. Regular family activities allow parents to be actively involved in the lives of their children and instill important values of honesty, compassion, and respect for others. By raising young people in a loving and secure environment, parents help them develop into successful adults and responsible citizens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When they are at their homes, this new institution, with its monogamy, its equality of man and woman, its sympathy between child and parent, its co-operative spirit of industry, its intelligence, its recreation, its worship, is at once a new revelation and a striking object-lesson of the meaning and possibility of family life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Every one of us should think of the family as an institution of dignity, one whose smallest doings have importance, because we belong to a great human family, and because we are bearing on the touch of life to future generations. We are now making history. ”

“ The importance of the family, as the divinely instituted social monad, depends manifestly on the happy combination and harmonious blending of authority and love which grow out of its constitution—two elements with the full development and true balance of which the well-being and happiness of all societies is intimately bound up. ”

“ The Moral Elite in the Modern Family.—Above all, we have to-day a growing number who live in the spirit of a true marriage and a noble cradle of infancy and show by actual example what the family is meant to be. These prophesy a marriage that 45demands each of the other that a perfect life shall perfect their love. These give a new pattern and type of parenthood, woven of the tears and joy, the aspiration and the service of those who call children from the storehouse of universal life, not in response to careless passion but in the solemn joy of creative purpose. ”

“ The family constitutes a most sacred and important social unit, and because of its intrinsic nature, it can best develop in the child the highest personal sentiment and social virtue. Among these are affection, sympathy, love, generosity and good will. ”

“ And since our system is nevertheless to pack them all into the same house and pretend that they are happy, and that this particular sort of happiness is the foundation of virtue, it is found that in discussing family life we never speak of actual adults or actual children, or of realities of any sort, but always of ideals such as The Home, a Mother's Influence, a Father's Care, Filial Piety, Duty, Affection, Family Life, etc. ”

“ While, therefore, the moral discipline which came to the mother in the old order of the family, led her to understand the value of personality, and the need of ever-increasing effort to make the individual lives within the family circle comfortable, happy and good, the moral discipline of the patriarchal father led toward an increasing conquest of nature, of other men, and of all the social forces, in the interest of his own family group. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The child learns much from the conversation that takes place in the family circle, his curiosity is stimulated, he asks questions, acquires information, and begins to take up an attitude to life. But, since the influence of the family may not be a good one, the family may also become the foster-mother of many of the vices. The early nurture that we receive in the family is probably a more potent influence for good or evil than anything else in our lives. The family teaches the preciousness of mutual affection and the value of common purposes and ideals. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Our policies must be premised on and must reinforce values such as family, hard work, integrity, personal responsibility. ”

“ And we shall see later that the mammalian mode of reproduction and of care of the young led to an almost purely mental and moral advance. For these could have but one logical outcome, family life. And the family is the foundation of society. And family and social life have been the school in which man has been compelled to learn the moral lessons, the application of which has made him what he is. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Family life is that which most truly leaves its mark upon us.—In the family habits are formed which make us what we are for the rest of our life. Home influences accompany us to the very end of our journey. Let any one ask himself what are the chief sources of his virtues, and he will feel that a large proportion of them are derived directly or indirectly from association with his fellow-creatures in the family. The training of parents, the affection and influence of mothers and sisters, powerfully and lastingly affect our intellectual and moral nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Helps Toward Family Unity.—What remains for society to do, after general moral training has worked its full service of individual preparation for good intent and wise choices and competent mastery of family arrangements, must be done or attempted on the basis rather of helps toward permanence, than of prohibition of release from marriage mistakes and wrongs.
We have left undone much we should have done to make it easier for young people to find their true mates, to start right in married life, and to bear the burdens of parenthood without stumbling on the way. ”

“ Has he a sense of responsibility in marriage and the burdens it brings? Does he desire a home? Do his views as to children reflect man's natural desire to found a family or merely the selfish desire for the freedom and luxury which the absence of children may make possible? Has he a right to approach fatherhood—is his body physically and morally clean? ”

“ Blessed with an extraordinary diversity of people from every culture and nation around the globe, the United States has always drawn strength from our citizens' shared commitment to the importance of family life. The family is society's most basic unit, daily providing the acceptance, love, and reassurance that enable each of us to flourish and succeed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Children are the comfort of the poor and distressed. The wedded life of a human pair may be ideal in every other respect, but one of the main functions of marriage is unaccomplished when the family remains incomplete.
48. The Right to be Well-Born.—The child comes into the home in obedience to the same primary instinct that draws the parents to each other. He calls out the affections of the parents and their intellectual resources, for he is dependent upon them, and often taxes their best judgment in coping with the difficulties that beset child life. ”

“ He owes it to his family to conserve for it the time to think of its needs, time to listen to the wife's story of its problems, time to sit and sympathize with children, time to hear their seemingly idle prattle, time to play with them. ”

“ Some way must be devised to recognize as economic assets of society the special sacrifice and service of the housemother in her function of life-giver for the coming generations and yet not ignore the father but rather bring him nearer to competent fatherhood as social conditions make it easier for him to bear his part of the family load. ”

“ When parents conceive the family in these terms and so organize the life of the home, the child becomes conscious of the fact, and at once the life of the family furnishes him with his first, his nearest, and most satisfactory appeal to loyalty. He feels that which he cannot analyze or express, the spiritual beauty and loyalty of family life. That life furnishes a soil and atmosphere for his soul. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the source of all life, humanity has learned the great lessons of family care and provision. All that is good in our families is true of this great family of all mankind. The great purpose of this family, as of all families, is the development of the highest, fullest life in its members. Fatherhood regards the provision of food, clothing, and shelter but as incidental to the great purpose of training the children.
This is the purpose of the Father of us all, to develop the best in us. When our weak hearts cry for ease, for rest, for pleasures, He sends the task, the sorrow, the loss. ”