Parenthood

“ This has quickly become a widespread movement for education in parenthood. Pride of parenthood brings fathers and [Pg viii] mothers to the Better Babies Contests. Parental love holds them there to watch their babies examined by physicians and to learn how the condition of their children can be improved by intelligent care and feeding and sanitary environment. ”

“ The immensity of the power of parenthood, both on the personal lives which it brings into existence, and on the community of which each individual is to form a part, is not yet perceived by our Statesmen in its true perspective. ”

“ No job presents greater challenges, demands broader responsibilities, or promises more profound rewards than parenthood. Parents are daily caretakers and lifelong role models. They guide us and share the values and lessons that enable us to grow and flourish. Throughout our lives, we remember our parents' example, recognizing that their joys and aspirations, triumphs and disappointments, have shaped our experience and given us meaningful direction. ”

“ Healthy boys and girls will learn that as their parents made them they will one day themselves qualify for all those joys, pains, excitements and interests which are so intimately wrapt round the functions of parenthood. To prepare boys and girls to become parents may seem a big proposition. ”

“ Not only throughout the lower creatures do we find the responsibilities of parenthood increasing as we go up the scale towards the higher, but, even in the various grades of highly [209] civilized man, the responsibility for the children is ever greater in proportion with the general culture and position of the parents. ”

“ The obvious relationship of mother and child, the lack of such irrefutable testimony to parenthood in the case of man, and other elements of primitive experience lending confusion to the situation, made it a process of time and a test of growing intelligence for men to learn that babies take two parents to give them birth. ”

“ There are plenty of healthy orphans whose parents were strong and sound both in body and in mind, but who are strangers to a father's and mother's love, and are craving for a good education. Make your own choice, but take only the very best. Then you will have a family and enjoy all the pleasures of parenthood. As for the rest, heed my advice. Avoid pregnancy. ”

“ It should never be forgotten that mothers and children are very human, and that the vocation upon which young people enter with least training is parenthood. Children and parents get their training together. It takes love and wisdom and proper environment to bring both to their best ”

“ We see that the problem of the place of parents in life, after their function of parenthood has been adequately fulfilled, a problem which offers no difficulties among most forms of life, has been found hard to solve by Man. ”

“ Problems of babyhood; building a constitution, forming a character. **$1.25. Holt.
This two-fold study of the controllable aspects of child development furnishes conclusions reached from the standpoint of the physician, the teacher, the mother and the father. “It is hoped that thru its frank and practical treatment of some of the many problems presented by parenthood it may give courage to withstand the criticism of tradition and convention, strength to resist the modern tendency to indulgence, faith to fight for the child’s birthright of a sane mind in a sane body.” ”

“ Surely the duty of parents is plain. To set before their children from earliest infancy examples of placidity and strength of character, to educate their will no less than their intellect, to guard them as far as possible from all harmful suggestions, to love them without idolising them, to study carefully their physical as well as their mental and moral needs—in this way, and in this way alone, can safety be had against the dread evil of hysteria and allied nervous troubles. ”

“ Parental responsibility is consequently much greater than most parents suppose; but so is parental opportunity. This book accordingly is addressed primarily to parents in the hope that it may be of some assistance to them in avoiding the pitfalls, and developing the possibilities, of that most important of all human activities—the training of the next generation. ”

“ There cultivate your intellectual powers together by reading, and by conversation,—especially, on all subjects pertaining to parentage and the ante-natal, as well as the post-natal, development, education and life of your children. How anxious will every true and loving husband and father be, to unite with his wife and the mother of his children, in the nursery, to impart and to receive all possible light in regard to these matters!
Neither should you ever impose maternity on your wife at the expense of her social nature. ”

“ The last chapter introduced the thought of parents in their highest function—as revealers of God to their children. To bring the human race, family by family, child by child, out of the savage and inhuman desolation where He is not, into the light and warmth and comfort of the presence of God, is, no doubt, the chief thing we have to do in the world. And this individual work with each child, being the most momentous work in the world, is put into the hands of the wisest, most loving, disciplined, and divinely instructed of human beings. ”

“ The grand Obligations of Parents to their Children consist in teaching them a Knowledge of themselves, a Love of Duty, and a Love of Virtue. Whence it is evident, that the Attention of Parents to conduct their Children as they ought, is indispensably necessary, even to the third Stage of Life; but it is doubly so at the Beginning. It is a judicious Observation, that he who sets out wrong is half undone; and tho’ this holds good in the general Concerns of Life, yet it is no where more applicable than in the false Steps taken in the initiating our Children. ”

“ Maternity, for her, was reduced to the material cares and duties of the child's earliest years, and the essential element—affection—was always to be lacking. Respect for parents was, indeed, believed to insure a long and happy life. ”

“ Duty Of Parents To Children. Great are the responsibilities of the husband. Great are the responsibilities of the wife, but greater are the responsibilities of parents. Father and mother, God lays a responsibility upon you as you receive your new-born child. A precious little immortal soul, whose eternal destiny depends largely upon you. The proper training of children is attended with many difficulties, and every parent certainly needs instruction from God. ”

“ GENERAL TREATMENT OF INFANTS. Children are given to parents only for a lifetime; it may be long, or it may be very short; but to array them in fine linens, with bare neck and arms, as has been and is now to a great extent the custom in many refined communities, for public exhibition, is, it seems to me, a questionable act of parental affection. Yet many do so, and boast, when otherwise advised, of their ability to toughen. Mother, your child may be only one of a hundred to survive such experiments ”

“ Many parents, while indeed quite solicitous according to their lights, for the temporal good of their offspring, training them to a trade or profession, or settling them in marriage, devote but little thought to their spiritual welfare. They dread a vocation in their family as a catastrophe. ”

“ The parent's duties to the child are maintenance in his own condition in life, care for his education and his moral and religious culture, advice, restraint when needed, punishment when both deserved and needed, pure example and wholesome influence, aid in the formation of habits and aptitudes suited to his probable calling or estate in his adult years, and provision for his favorable entrance on his future career. ”

“ The young father-to-be, though a real and very important person, has been curiously neglected by all and sundry who concern themselves with the affairs of the “expectant mother,” “child welfare,” and the other social and semi-eugenic matters about which well-meaning people have so voluminously written and so sedulously talked. ”

“ It should be measured also by the peculiar necessities of the child, by his health, abilities and circumstances. "A parent is justified," says Paley in his Moral and Political Philosophy, "in making a difference between his children according as they stand in greater or less need of the assistance of his fortune, in consequence of the difference of their age or sex, or of the situations in which they are placed, or the various success which they have met with." ”

“ How dare you, how dare any husband, commit the destiny of his child into the hands of one, who, as he knows, thus loathes the thought of its existence? How can you subject your child to the possibility of such a gestational organization and development; such an ante-natal education; or force upon your wife the suffering and anguish of a loathed and hated maternity, or the necessity of doing a deed from which the soul of every 63noble woman must shrink with sickening horror? You could not do this wrong to your wife and child, till your manhood was sunk in the mire of disgusting sensualism. ”

“ Answer child’s questions regarding origin of life reverently, seriously, honestly, with emphasis upon nurturing and on social coöperation of mother and father; give a bias toward the social and spiritual relations of family life, and a suggestion of the future parental responsibilities of the child. ”

“ Being so often the only child or one of two, the infant enters on life as the ruler of the household. The devoted parents, instead of following the golden maxim, which says "Apply the rod early enough and there will be no need to use it at all," give way to every passing mood or whim of their offspring, and insist that the nurse shall follow the same foolish course. ”

“ He begins with the newborn infant, and demands that, if possible, it shall not be taken from its mother. He sets his face strongly against the custom of committing the child during the tenderest and most impressible period of its whole life to the care and companionship of an ignorant nursemaid, or of servants who have not the mother’s instinct, or the knowledge that can tell them how to behave in its presence. ”

“ Before I conclude, it may not be improper to sum up the duty of married persons, as parents, and as masters. Their duty as parents respects either the temporal or the spiritual good of their children. With regard to the former, you owe them protection and provision of necessaries, according to that rank and degree, wherein the wisdom of God has placed you. You are carefully to protect your children, from all the evils and dangers, to which infancy, childhood and youth are exposed. ”

“ Reverence and respect go hand in hand. “As ye measure to others, so in like manner shall it be measured to you again.”
359 DUTIES OF CHILDREN TO THEIR PARENTS CHILDREN SHOULD SHARE IN DUTIES Let the children share in the duties of the home. Even while very young there are many steps that a child may save the mother. Let them do the little things, such as bringing mother’s work basket or having something ready for father’s comfort when he comes home from the day’s work and care. Gradually, as they grow, let the tasks gently shift over to the young shoulders. ”

“ Father and Son Properly enough, the responsibility for health and development of young children rests upon the mother, and in most families this care remains with her till the children are able to look out for themselves. ”

“ In neither of these two ways can a deep and sound relation between children and parents be produced. [Pg 196]
We see on the one side a minority of conscientious mothers and fathers, who in a real sense live only for the children. They mould their whole life for the life of the children; and the children get the idea that they are the central point of existence. On the other side, we see children who take part in all the life and over-refinements of the home. ”

“ Parents' standards may seem, and even be, exigent, but the attempt to modify their rigor may not be made by those lacking in fundamental reverence for a child, and in conscious hope for its wise, noble, self-reliant maturity. ”

“ Imagine a mother not feeding or taking care of her infant, and yet counting on its thriving! or, fondly and diligently tending, taking care of her infant, and continuing to do so year after year, yet perfectly satisfied though it gained no strength, did not grow, nor walk, nor speak, nor show the slightest sign of getting out of babyhood! ”

“ You may grievously wrong your child, and subject it to physical and mental tendencies that may deeply affect its character and happiness, during its earthly existence, by subjecting it to the liability of inheriting the unhealthy and imbecile conditions in which you and the mother may be, at the time the relation was held in which it originated. ”

“ Where the conscience of the parent has only been awakened late in life to this high duty to the child, the attempt to approach the subject with the young adult is often deeply resented by both boy and girl. ”

“ The child must now be taken into the family councils and find the parents interested in all that interests him. Where this is not done, we have the conditions for the interesting cases of so many youth, who now begin to suspect that father, mother, or both, are not their true parents. ”

“ To say that the mother—and indeed both parents—ought to form a part of the playing circle of the youngest children, in order to watch their opening dispositions, to check what may be improper, and encourage what ought to be encouraged, would be only to repeat what has often been recommended by the best writers on education—but which must be repeated, again and again, till it leaves an impression, especially on CHRISTIAN parents. ”

“ Perhaps it was my chief misfortune that I had neither father nor mother alive; for parents have an instinctive sagacity in regard to the welfare of their children, and the child feels a confidence both in the wisdom and affection of his parents which he cannot transfer to any delegate of their duties, however conscientious. ”