The Relation of Parents and Children by Mary Wood-Allen, M. D.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 24, 1907

The Relation of Parents and Children

By Mary Wood-Allen, M. D.

THE trinity of father, mother, and child forms the most beautiful of all human relationships. Ideally it is a combination of protecting care, guiding love, and absolute faith. If it fails in any one of these respects, it has not reached its God-appointed place. “He setteth the solitary in families,” so that they shall not be alone; but united in interests and in love, shall find in this union strength and happiness.

As students of God’s purpose in placing us in families, we desire to see what is gained by this relation. Why should it not be as well for us to be free as individuals, and not bound so indissolubly to these few who form our family circle? Upon our understanding of this matter will depend our appreciation of family duties, our recognition of our own place in the family group, our valuation of the family. While the institution of the family is not merely to secure a desirable boarding-house for the man and a permanent situation for the woman, it certainly does accomplish these results, and too often in the realization of selfish comfort and protection the higher purpose of the family is forgotten.

The family should be a school for the teaching of all the virtues. Here man should learn that he is the “house-band,” holding all together by his protecting foresight; the wife that she is the “weaver,” uniting all by interlacing bands of loving helpfulness.

It is not so very difficult to see what is the duty and office of the parents in the home. To them is entrusted the guidance and education of their children. They are to teach the children the words of the Lord. Deut. 6:7; 32:46.

But it is more difficult to decide just the place and duty of the children in the home if we take more than a superficial view of the case. They are not placed in the home to be governed simply by arbitrary authority; but they must be taught to obey, because obedience is the duty of all individuals—obedience to right custom, to law, to parents, to God; because obedience is the only dignified thing, if we obey rightful authority. Isa. 1:19; 1 Peter 1:22.

Too often, when children reach the years when they begin to think that they are “grown up,” they feel a rebellion against the commands of their parents. They think they are now old enough to decide their own conduct. As long as they remain in the home, they should have so great a regard for the wishes of the parents that they would desire to do what would please their parents, and do it in the spirit of loving reverence.

The boys and girls who imagine that self-assertiveness and disregard of the parents’ wishes confer a superiority on themselves are mistaken. There is always something peculiarly charming in a loving deference to father and mother. The whole world applauded when President Garfield kissed his aged mother at his inauguration, and by so doing implied that he recognized his indebtedness to her for all the honors that had come to him.

A false pride sometimes makes a young person ashamed of the parents whose self-sacrifice, it may be, has procured for him the superior advantages which their lives have missed.

I knew of a young man whose mother took in washing to pay his way through college. He soon grew too proud to live in her humble home, and took room and board among the more fortunate students. Sometimes he called upon his mother, but usually after dark. One afternoon, however, he had called, and as he left the house, she accompanied him to the gate. A young lady whom he knew was passing, and he bade his mother a rather curt good-by, and bowing graciously to the young lady, asked permission to walk by her side. “Who was that old woman?” she asked, with a rather supercilious air. “O, that was only my washerwoman,” he replied, with the tone of one who did not want to be praised for a good deed, “I often go in to see the dear old soul, she appreciates it so much.”

“How very kind of you,” said the girl, approvingly, for the young man who would openly acknowledge that he called on his washerwoman seemed quite a hero in her eyes. If she had known the truth, she would have had a very different opinion of the young man.

There is one thought that should ever be present in the minds of youth: your parents may be humble, even uncultivated and uncouth, but one thing is sure, you could never have existed but for them. If life is worth anything to you, if you are superior to them in ability, yet you are indebted to them for the life that gives you opportunity to use that ability—yes, perhaps for opportunity itself. To scorn them is to lower yourself; to honor them is to exalt yourself. Prov. 20:20; 23:22. All deference, all loving service given to parents dignifies the giver; but to withhold from them due respect is in reality to lower one’s own

station in life, and to bring upon himself the wrath of God. To talk to others of the shortcomings of our parents is in reality to uncover our own defects. So if we had no higher motive than self-protection, we should guard from the gaze of strangers the failings of the other members of the family, even as we guard our own.—Mary Wood-Allen, M. D.