CHAPTER II: ON THE OBLIGATIONS OF PARENTS TOWARD CHILDREN

Parents owe children: 1° love; 2° education.

The reason for this obligation is founded in the very bowels of nature and in the title of generation. For nature teaches each, indeed even brute animals themselves, which love their offspring and seek for them the things necessary for preserving life.

427. • Parents ought to pursue children with love: 1) internal; 2) efficacious; and 3) ordered, so that they not only put away every hatred and malevolence of soul, but love them in heart and, as much as in them lies, care for their good and provide for them in every matter. For just as anyone ought to love himself, so parents are bound sincerely to love children as something of themselves, flesh from their flesh, so that after God they have nothing dearer to themselves.

Hence parents sin more or less against the special virtue of piety:

1° Who are inflamed with a depraved affection and unjust hatred against children, and disdain them by their aspect, or seriously imprecate grave evils against them, and do not assist them when there is need.

2° Who call them by gravely contumelious names. For thus they furnish to them occasion for anger, and make them peevish and contumacious.

3° Who manifest their hidden faults to outsiders without a just cause. Yet parents can reveal these to one another, because they share in the power of punishing, and it is often expedient that they be known to each, for preventing the perversion of children, etc.

4° Who love them with disordered affection, so that they concede or permit all things to them lest they sadden them; or who, using unseasonable kindness, act more remissly toward them, and whether because of sluggishness or because of cruel benignity neglect to draw them back from vices by serious precepts or other efficacious means.

5° Who favor one more than the others without a just reason, and look upon the rest indifferently, or even have them as adulterine; for this love of one before the rest is the font and occasion of quarrels, fights, divisions, and infinite evils in families.

The education of children, both bodily and spiritual, must be procured by parents.

428. • Bodily education demands from parents a threefold providence, namely by reason of: 1° life; 2° food; 3° state.

a) By reason of life. Parents are bound to carry on diligent care of offspring from conception itself, to turn aside all things which can be harmful to them, and to watch that they be exposed to no danger of life.

Hence of themselves they sin gravely: 1° women who do not take care lest the fetus in the womb be destroyed by disordered wantonness, dances, too heavy burdens, running or a long journey, too much anger, or rather vehement grief; 2° men who treat pregnant wives harshly, afflict them with grave blows, or impose enormous labors on them; 3° spouses who do not take care lest little children be suffocated, by placing them, still very tender, that is, in general before they have completed the first year of age, with themselves in bed without any barrier, or do not take care lest some evil in any way happen to them from water, fire, beasts, iron instruments, etc....

b) By reason of food. Parents are bound to procure for children whatever things are necessary for food, habitation, and clothing congruent with their state and condition.

Hence parents sin: 1° who do not assist children suffering necessity, until they are able to provide for themselves by labor or industry; 2° who cast children out of the house while they cannot yet provide for themselves, or who compel them to beg or to exercise a vile art alien to their condition.

Quaer. Must a mother nourish little children with her own milk?

Resp. Affirmatively, with the common opinion, because natural right seems to postulate this. Nevertheless this obligation does not press under grave sin, because otherwise a grave disorder does not appear. But necessity, notable utility, or custom in force among primary families, etc., excuses from every fault; ... but then under grave sin the mother ought to substitute for herself a nurse good as to morals and health. St. Alphonsus¹ - Collet, etc., and others commonly against others more lax or more strict.

429. • c) By reason of state. Parents are bound to procure for children a state in which they can sometime live honorably according to their condition. - Hence they sin:

1° Who do not employ at least moderate diligence so that they may acquire goods from which they may suitably sustain their children and provide for their future state.

2° Who do not teach, nor take care that their children be taught, an art congruent with their state, or another kind of living decently.

3° A fortiori, those who by laziness, negligence, drinking, feasting, games, and imprudent business dissipate the family property.

4° Who without a legitimate cause obstinately deny a dowry suitable for the daughter for entering matrimony or entrance into Religion.¹

Quaer. What do our laws generally establish concerning the obligation of parents as to the bodily education of offspring?

Resp. 1° "The common law furnishes no means of enforcing the parent to maintain, protect, or educate his child."² But in many States, during the minority of the child, "... the parent is absolutely bound to provide reasonably for his maintenance and education; and he may be sued for necessaries furnished, and schooling given to a child under just and reasonable circumstances...."

"In consequence of the obligation of the father to provide for the maintenance, and ... the education of his infant children, he is entitled... to the value of their labor and services."³

Resp. 2° Concerning the obligation of parents as to the sustenance and education of illegitimate offspring, Kent⁴ has these words: "The mother or reputed father" (by which the judge ordinarily considers him whom the sworn mother affirms) "is generally in this country chargeable by law with the maintenance of the bastard child." Cf. L. IV. 951.

430. • Parents are especially bound to procure spiritual education for children. The reason is that man, besides material or bodily being, which he has in common with the other animals, is endowed by God with a rational and most noble soul, created to the image of the Divinity itself; and he was made that he may tend to God as his supernatural last end. Therefore by parents he ought especially to be instructed and directed to this end; for matrimony has been raised to the dignity of a Sacrament for this reason, that offspring born may be reborn in Christ and prepared for eternal life. - But for this education there is required: 1° doctrine; 2° correction; 3° example.

a) Doctrine. Parents are bound, by themselves or through fit instructors, to educate children in good morals, in observance of the commandments of God, in faith, and in all things necessary to salvation, because they ought to educate them in the way by which they may arrive at God.

Therefore parents must carefully take care: 1° that children be regenerated by the grace of Baptism as soon as possible (see n. 1259. q. 5°); 2° that from tenderest childhood they teach them the principal heads of Christian doctrine (n. 257 sq.), and incline their hearts to God; 3° that from the first years they accustom them to morning and evening prayers, to the Offices of the Church and Catechisms, and also turn them away from the fallacious allurements, pomps, and pleasures of the world; 4° that they set over them teachers conspicuous in doctrine and especially in gravity of morals; 5° that they watch day and night lest they be corrupted by depraved companions, conversations, or readings.

431. • b) Correction. Parents are bound to correct delinquent children. Hence: He that spareth the rod hateth his son.¹

But correction, that it may be useful, ought to be moderate and prudent. For immoderate chastisement is known to harm more than to profit, since it renders children peevish, stupid, faint-hearted, and sometimes affected by despair; indeed, instead of the love owed to parents, it is wont to produce contempt or even deadly hatred.

c) Example. Parents owe good example to children, because 1° examples more efficaciously than words somehow draw to following, especially if they are furnished by Superiors; 2° because, if parents themselves are known to be imbued with evil morals, their words will move children little to pursuing good morals.

432. You will resolve. - 1° Parents sin gravely who, spending every care only on temporal things, so forget spiritual things that they do not even know the things necessary for attaining salvation, much less instruct their children or take care that they be instructed.

2° Parents sin gravely who, to spare expenses, utterly neglect the spiritual education of their children.

3° Of themselves parents sin gravely who by excessive indulgence notably neglect to correct children when otherwise it would be necessary; but no less do they sin who punish children with more grave penalties, for example if they mutilate them, or inflict on them a grave wound or blows or beatings so grave that their life or health suffers notable detriment.

4° Parents perpetrate a threefold sin in species when they utter filthy words and obscene conversations while children are hearing, vomit forth curses and imprecations, and belch out oaths and blasphemies. This is plain from those things which I taught n. 293, under "We have said: Scandal has at least a twofold malice."

5° Parents sin gravely who permit children near the use of reason, either with themselves or with others of a different sex - whether children or adults - in the same bed, or older ones with themselves in the same room. But if the matter can in no way be otherwise, parents should abstain from the use of marriage during the time when children lie with them in the same bed or room.

433. Questions. - Quaer. 1° What about parents who hand over offspring to a foundling home, especially in these regions?

Resp. It is certain that those sin gravely:

1° Who place newly born offspring near the house of someone; for they expose both the temporal and spiritual life of the offspring to grave danger.

2° Who hand over offspring to a public foundling home in those places where a Catholic one exists; for without cause they expose the soul of the offspring to grave danger.

3° Who, in whatever manner finally they expose the offspring, do not first duly baptize them, or neglect means by which their baptism may be rendered indubitable.

4° Who expose them in whatever manner without a cause sufficiently excusing.

Quaer. 2° What in places where no Catholic foundling home exists, and where therefore offspring, after leaving the public foundling home, is to be handed over to sectarians or infidels, as is customary?

Resp. A mother can be moved by a threefold cause to expose offspring: a) infamy alone; b) poverty alone; c) each at the same time. If the girl has means, in the first case, she is bound to hand the offspring over to a nurse or take care that it be handed over, as often as this can be done without danger of her reputation, which, as is supposed, is still intact. - But one who is pressed by necessity of consulting her reputation is bound to take care lest the offspring be imperiled in life or salvation. But to take care for salvation will be most difficult for her, since the curators of the foundling home hand infants over for education to whomever they wish, as was said above.

The second cause, or poverty alone, will be of various force for excusing. Yet where it is extreme, or so grave that the mother cannot sustain the offspring, Kenrick¹ does not dare to condemn her if, that she may consult its life, from the instinct of nature she hands the offspring over to the foundling home to be nourished, cherishing hope that some occasion may afterward be born to her to instruct it with Christian documents.

The third cause will excuse if she commits the offspring to the foundling home with this intention, that at least she may consult herself, being prepared to consult the salvation of the offspring by that means which she can.

434. • Quaer. 3° What are the obligations of other blood relatives, ascendants and descendants, especially tutors?

Resp. They are generally the same, with due proportion, as those of parents with respect to children, and vice versa; for all these, by reason of the generation of some from others, are bound mutually by the strict bond of piety, especially if, parents lacking, ascendants take up the care of grandchildren. - Thus all.

Yet note with Kenrick² that the care of non-Catholics is not easily to be assumed by anyone as tutor or curator, since on one side he cannot favor heresy by educating them in it, and on the other side, by not educating them in it, he would seem to violate the faith given to the testator or the court. (z) p. 479.

The dispositions of our civil laws concerning the constitution of a tutor and his rights and offices, see, if you like, apud Kent,³ or apud Walker,⁴ or apud Smith.⁵

Quaer. 4° What are the mutual obligations of brothers and sisters?

Resp. 1° They ought to pursue one another with mutual love, not only with common affection, as other men, but with a peculiar love because of the close bond of blood.

Resp. 2° They ought also mutually to aid one another as to the necessaries of life, not only in extreme, but also in grave necessity. - Thus all. - See St. Alph.¹