Chapter 35—Parental Responsibility
Parents are in a great degree responsible for the mold given to
the characters of their children. They should aim at symmetry and
proportion. There are few well-balanced minds, because parents are
wickedly negligent of their duty to stimulate weak traits and repress
wrong ones. They do not remember that they are under the most
solemn obligation to watch the tendencies of each child, that it is their
duty to train their children to right habits and right ways of thinking.
Sometimes parents wait for the Lord to do the very work that He
has given them to do. Instead of restraining and controlling their
children as they should, they pet and indulge them, and gratify their
whims and desires. When these children go out from their early
homes, it is with characters deformed by selfishness, with ungoverned
appetites, with strong self-will; they are destitute of courtesy or respect
for their parents, and do not love religious truth or the worship of God.
They have grown up with traits that are a lifelong curse to themselves
and to others. Home is made anything but happy if the evil weeds of
dissension, selfishness, envy, passion, and sullen stubbornness are left
to flourish in the neglected garden of the soul.
Parents should show no partiality, but should treat all their children
with tenderness, remembering that they are the purchase of Christ’s
blood. Children imitate their parents; hence great care should be taken
to give them correct models. Parents who are kind and polite at home,
[320]
while at the same time they are firm and decided, will see the same
traits manifested in their children. If they are upright, honest, and
honorable, their children will be quite likely to resemble them in these
particulars. If they reverence and worship God, their children, trained
in the same way, will not forget to serve Him also.
It is often the case that parents are not careful to surround their
children with right influences. In choosing a home they think more of
their worldly interests than of the moral and social atmosphere, and
the children form associations that are unfavorable to the development
of piety and the formation of right characters. Then parents allow
283