Marriage Relation
25
The father is seldom prepared, with his failing faculties, to properly
bring up his young family. These children have peculiar traits of
character, which constantly need a counteracting influence, or they will
go to certain ruin. They are not educated aright. Their discipline has
too often been of the fitful, impulsive kind, by reason of his age. The
father has been susceptible of changeable feelings. At one time over-
indulgent, while at another he is unwarrantably severe. Everything in
such families is wrong, and domestic wretchedness is greatly increased.
Thus a class of beings have been thrown upon the world as a burden
to society.
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Those who increase their number of children, when, if they con-
sulted reason, they must know that physical and mental weakness
must be their inheritance, are transgressors of the last six precepts of
God’s law, which specify the duty of man to his fellow-man. They
do their part in increasing the degeneracy of the race, and in sinking
society lower, thus injuring their neighbor. If God thus regards the
rights of neighbors, has he no care in regard to closer and more sacred
relationship? If not a sparrow falls to the ground without his notice,
will he be unmindful of the children born into the world, diseased
physically and mentally, suffering in a greater or less degree, all their
lives? Will he not call parents to an account, to whom he has given
reasoning powers, for putting these higher faculties in the background,
and becoming slaves to passion, when, as the result, generations must
bear the mark of their physical, mental, and moral deficiencies? In
addition to the suffering they entail upon their children, they have no
portion but poverty to leave to their pitiful flock. They cannot educate
them, and many do not see the necessity of it; neither could they, if
they did see such necessity, find time to train them, and instruct them,
and lessen, as much as possible, the wretched inheritance transmitted
to them. Parents should not increase their families any faster than
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they know that their children can be well cared for, and educated.
A child in the mother’s arms from year to year is great injustice to
her. It lessens, and often destroys, social enjoyment, and increases
domestic wretchedness. It robs their children of that care, education,
and happiness, which parents should feel it their duty to bestow upon
them.
The husband violates the marriage vow and the duties enjoined
upon him in the word of God, when he disregards the health and