Marriage Relation
35
in season to instill into infant minds good and correct principles. The
mother should be with her children as much as possible, and should
sow precious seed in their hearts.
The mother’s time belongs in a special manner to her children.
They have a right to her time which no others can have. In many
cases mothers have neglected to discipline their children, because it
would require too much of their time, which time they think must be
spent in the cooking department, or in preparing their own clothing,
and that of their children, according to fashion, to foster pride in their
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young hearts. In order to keep their restless children still, they have
given them cake or candies, at almost any hour of the day, and their
stomachs are crowded with hurtful things at irregular periods. Their
pale faces testify to the fact that mothers are doing what they can to
destroy the remaining life-forces of their poor children. The digestive
organs are constantly taxed, and are not allowed periods of rest. The
liver becomes inactive, and the blood impure; and the children are
sickly and irritable, because they are real sufferers from intemperance,
and it is impossible for them to exercise patience.
Parents wonder that children are so much more difficult to control
than they used to be. In most cases their own criminal management
has made them so. The quality of food they bring upon their tables,
and encourage their children to eat, is constantly exciting their animal
passions, and weakening the moral and intellectual faculties. Very
many children are made miserable dyspeptics in their youth by the
wrong course their parents have pursued toward them in childhood.
Parents will be called to render an account to God for thus dealing
with their children.
Many parents do not give their children lessons in self-control.
They indulge their appetite, and suffer them to form, in their childhood,
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habits of eating and drinking according to their own desires. So will
they be in their general habits in their youth. Their desires have not
been restrained, and as they grow older, they will not only indulge in
the common habits of intemperance, but they will go still further in
indulgences. They will choose their own associates, although corrupt.
They cannot endure restraint from their parents. They will give loose
rein to their corrupt passions, and have but little regard for purity or
virtue. This is the reason why there is so little purity and moral worth
among the youth of the present day, and is the great cause why men