“CHILDREN ARE THEIR OPPRESSORS.”
In an article on “The Cause and Cure of Strikes,” a writer in The American Mother, Dr. Charles Fleetwood, refers to various strikes in colleges and schools as “of almost equal significance” to the recent great coal strike. They are more significant; they mean much more. They mean that the children are becoming lawless, having no respect for proper authority. This writer, a physician, well says: “These attempts [of the children] to get their desires by force are an expression of lawlessness, and bespeak a condition that bids fair to become dangerous to the life of the republic.” And while others are calling for boards of arbitration, he cries, “Look well to the training of your children.” But we do not believe in the weak sentimentality abroad at the present time, and which seems, to some extent, to have taken hold of this writer. He says:— The first and greatest lesson for the child to learn is to obey; but he owes obedience to the parent only as the representative of law. As an individual, the parent has no more right to demand obedience from the child than a child has from the parent. Each soul must live its own life, and allow others the freedom to follow their own God-given propensities. But every soul, to live its own life truly, must be in harmony with the universe—in other words, must obey the laws of the universe. The above paragraph is a strange mixture of sense and nonsense. The first duty that a child owes is to obey, is an important truth, and the first one to obey is the parent. That is one of the laws of the universe, “Honor [respect, reverence, obey] thy father and thy mother.” But nowhere are parents taught to honor, reverence, or obey the child. This fundamental law does not permit a parent to be a brute, nor justify him in cruel, tyrannical conduct. It is his duty to love his children, not to provoke them to wrath, to train them up in the way that they should go, and not to be bitter against them. In all these things he should seek the child’s good with great firmness and kindness. In most cases punishment will sometimes be found necessary. “The heart of the child is froward, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him,” is good Bible teaching still. And if in the parents’ government there has been a proper blending of love and sweetness and dignity and justice, no lasting resentment will be awakened in the child. There are many propensities in a child that are not God-given, and the true parent knows that they ought to be trained out of the character. He knows, too, that habit is often easily suppressed in a child, and as easily formed, even contrary to desire. Corporal punishment is in some cases necessary. From the very beginning the parent should, in all reason, demand obedience from the child and should insist on it. There are thousands of the best men, the most law-abiding men in the country to-day, who recall with gratitude the demand to obedience on the part of parent, and insistence in that demand, even at times to severe punishment. It restrained from evil; it caused the bundle of humanity to respect its parent; and so laid the foundation for respect for all proper authority. The child that is taught to obey his parent will much more readily be a law-abiding citizen; will much more readily yield to God. Those peoples, the strictest in school and home discipline, like the Scotch and Jews, figure much less frequently among “charity cases,” in divorce courts and in the criminal docks. There has been much, too much, of the cruel in punishment, but the sentiments of certain “reformers” are swinging to an extreme, even worse in its effects. The prophet wrote of these times when he declared: “As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.” Isa. 3:12. One of the prominent sins of the “last days” among the people of God is said to be, disobedience to parents. 2 Tim. 3:2. It is time for parents to arouse and to learn to train their children for God and right, that children may be willing to stand alone with God in the right.