Parental Responsibility
By J. W. Lowe
SOME one has said that the proper time to commence molding the character of a child is two hundred years before it is born. This may seem a very strange expression, but it is only a happy way of emphasizing the importance of a great law—the law of heredity. Children ordinarily partake of the nature of their parents, but it is not an uncommon thing for a child to be almost a perfect reproduction of one of its grandparents or great grandparents. Ancestral traits of character often crop out in children. It is declared that the most besotted drunkards have inherited a tendency to drunkenness, and that this inheritance often dates back as far as two or three generations. Then how important it is that men and women should be ever moral and exemplary, that they may not be responsible for wrecked lives in their children or other descendants! Children have a right to be well born. But how can they be well born when their parents and grandparents and great grandparents have been violators of all that is good and pure? Many a child has been born mentally depraved or mentally unbalanced, because of its mother's mental state before its birth. O that parents would realize their responsibility in this matter! It is a terrible thing to bring a crippled character into this world.