Section II. On the Duties of Parents Toward Children

I. Principle. Parents owe their children love, both internal and proved by acts. The acts chiefly include bodily and spiritual education.

II. Applications. 1. Due love requires that they pursue their children with a good affection and wish good things for them.

Against this obligation they sin gravely: 1. who hate their children, wish grave evil to them, or from the heart curse them or rejoice over their grave evil; 2. who do not help them in necessity or do not avert some other grave bodily or spiritual evil from them; 3. who without cause often treat them truly harshly, strike them; 4. who undeservedly favor one much more than the others and thus are the cause why the others are gravely saddened.

2. Due bodily education requires provision for life, sustenance, and state. "Parents," as can. 1113 says, "are held by a most grave obligation, according to their powers, to care for the education of their offspring, both religious and moral, and physical and civil, and also to provide for their temporal good."¹

a) Provision for life requires that parents care for the offspring from conception itself, and avoid those things which could harm it.

Against this obligation they sin gravely: 1. the mother who, while pregnant, dances immoderately, labors immoderately, lifts heavier burdens, consumes harmful things. Besides, let her beware of too tight clothing, of more vehement anger, melancholy, drinking spirituous liquors, and other things which can bring harm to the offspring or induce danger of abortion; indeed in the case there is also sin against justice, because the offspring has a right to life and to it whole. 2. The father who long vexes his pregnant wife, afflicts her with grave sorrow, or strikes her. 3. Parents who leave little children alone at home with danger that harm may come to them through fire, water, animals, instruments, or excessive crying. Likewise those who keep tender infants with them in bed with danger of suffocation;² the gravity of this danger depends on the age of the infant, the width of the bed, and on whether the mother is accustomed to be quiet in sleep. Commonly, however, especially in the first year of life, the mother should not keep the little infant with herself (St. Alphonsus, VI, 160).

Question. Is the mother bound herself to nurse the offspring?³

Resp. 1. In the affirmative; which is clear both from the authority of the holy Fathers,⁴ and from the fact that the Author of nature granted milk to the mother for that end, as is evident; wherefore note that the milk of the mother herself profits the offspring more than another's. But the obligation is only light, because no grave disorder appears. Hence a just cause excuses, for example weakness of the mother or a new pregnancy (St. Alphonsus, III, 336).⁵

Resp. 2. If the mother herself abstains from nursing the offspring, she is bound to entrust it to a wet-nurse, because artificial nutrition cannot fully compensate for human milk. Indeed she is held to this under grave obligation if the infant is somewhat weak, namely on account of the danger otherwise to be feared for the offspring. From seeking a wet-nurse a very grave or just cause excuses, according as the obligation is grave or light.

Resp. 3. If the mother abstains both from nursing the offspring and from seeking a wet-nurse, artificial nutrition remains. Moreover, if recourse is had to it, the mother is held under grave obligation to apply due precautions; for the death of innumerable newborns is to be attributed to the neglect of these precautions, for example to a defect of milk, uncleanness of vessels, etc.

Resp. 4. If the mother uses a wet-nurse, there is a grave obligation of taking on a wet-nurse healthy in body, because the infant is easily infected by diseases of the wet-nurse - especially syphilitic diseases. It is disputed whether there is also a grave obligation of substituting for herself a wet-nurse of honorable morals. Some affirm it, because they judge that the qualities of the wet-nurse flow into the infant. This, however, is denied today, because food, for example the flesh which we use, in no way directly flows into morals. Yet a grave obligation can be present from the fact that a wet-nurse ruined in morals can harm the infant in another way.

Corollary. Practically one must work so that the mother herself nurse her own offspring; both because of itself she is bound to this, and because the use of a wet-nurse is to be disapproved for the reasons set forth, and artificial nutrition is easily done without due precautions; which is so true that innumerable infants die chiefly on account of precautions neglected.

b) Provision for sustenance requires that parents furnish to children a dwelling, food, clothing, and all those things which are necessary for maintenance suitable to their condition, and this until the children can provide for themselves; finally, that according to circumstances they leave a suitable inheritance to the children (St. Thomas, II-II, q. 101, a. 2, ad 2).

Against this obligation they sin gravely: 1. who expose offspring in a public place; who hand it over to a foundling hospital, unless very grave poverty or infamy to be avoided excuses them (St. Alphonsus, III, 336). Let them see, however, whether the foundling hospital to which it is handed over provides due education, even religious education; 2. who deny food or other necessities to needy children; 3. who squander goods and thus cast the children down into a lower state⁶ (St. Alphonsus, III, cited place).

c) Provision for state imposes on parents the obligation of seeing to it that afterward the children can live according to their condition; this obligation is of charity, not however of justice.

Therefore they sin: 1. who do not send children even to elementary school; indeed they commit of themselves a grave sin, since on the one hand this can be done easily today, and on the other hand neglect of elementary instruction creates grave inconvenience for children, and those who do not frequent schools easily find themselves in the occasion of sinning; 2. who do not see to it that children acquire a science, art, or craft suitable to their state and capacity; I say suitable: hence higher instruction is not to be imposed on those who are less apt in talent for acquiring it.

3. Due spiritual education comprises teaching and exhortation, example, vigilance and correction, and these so furnished that at the same time formation of character is kept before the eyes.

a) Teaching and exhortation; namely, parents are to instruct their children, by themselves and through others, in Christian doctrine, and therefore are to command them to frequent catechism (can. 1335) and sermons and ask them about what they have heard; they are to imbue them with hatred of sin, especially mortal sin, with love of virtue, of God, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and send them to Catholic schools (can. 1372 ff.); they are to take care that they recite prayers morning and evening, receive the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist in due time (cf. can. 854, § 4), fulfill the precepts of the Church, frequent the sacraments, be present at sacred offices, and enroll in pious associations (St. Alphonsus, Homo Apostolicus, tr. 7, n. 5).

Parents sin gravely who care nothing or little for Catholic instruction.⁷

About schools we shall speak more fully in Scholion I; about coeducation in Scholion II; about instruction concerning dishonorable actions and sexual life something is more suitably said in the treatise on the Sixth Precept.⁸

b) Example, according to the saying: words move, examples draw.⁹

Against this obligation they transgress gravely: 1. who blaspheme in the presence of children, speak shameful things, provoke a spouse with injuries and curses, indulge in marital liberties; 2. who are given to a notorious vice, such as drunkenness or lust; 3. who ridicule Religion or priests, or do not observe the precepts of the Church (St. Alphonsus, Homo Apostolicus, tr. 7, n. 5).

c) Vigilance and correction. Let them see from the first age what the inclinations of the children are, namely so that good inclinations may be promoted, but bad ones restrained. Let them amend those who offend, now by correcting them but without anger or curses, now by chastising them, chiefly by privative punishments. - Let them turn them away from dangers and occasions. Therefore let them beware lest sons and daughters sleep in the same bed, or even in the same room as parents; lest boys together with girls guard animals or play; lest they be perverted by bad companions or readings; lest they court untimely, or with a non-Catholic, or alone; lest they hand them over to dangerous service; nor let them permit girls to be taught, for example, music, by a teacher outside all presence of others (St. Alphonsus, III, 339; Homo Apostolicus, tr. 7, n. 5; Praxis confessarii, n. 211).

d) Formation of character; about which we spoke in n. 50.

Corollary. Education "which, content with the mere powers of nature, rejects or neglects those things which divinely contribute to the right formation of Christian life, is false and full of error; and every way and method of educating youth which takes no or scarcely any account of the stain transmitted from our first parents to all posterity and of divine grace, and which therefore rests wholly on the powers of nature alone, wanders entirely from the truth."¹⁰ "Here nearly belong the doctrines which place almost the whole foundation of education in this, that children should be free to form themselves by their own talent and wholly by their own judgment, or with the counsels of elders rejected and every law and both human and divine help set aside. Yet this does not prevent adolescents, the more they advance in age and knowledge of things, from having to bring their own effort and industry also more and more to their education; nor does it prevent force and harshness from having to be removed from the education of children, while just correction, however, is not excluded."¹¹

¹ Cf. encyclical letter of Pius XI, Divini illius magistri, "On the Christian Education of Youth," December 31, 1929 (A.A.S. 1930, p. 49 ff.).

² Roman Ritual, title 2, chapter 2, n. 32.

³ Cf. Muckermann, Der biologische Wert der muetterlichen Stillpflicht; Capellmann-Bergmann, Pastoral-Medizin, 8th ed., p. 96; N. K. Stemmen 1904, p. 239; Meuleman, Het levensrecht van de geboren vrucht; De Katholiek, vol. 148, p. 62 and p. 181.

⁴ Cf. Benedict XIV, De Synodo dioecesana, bk. 11, c. 7, n. 9.

⁵ The contrary custom of matrons is to be prudently opposed: both because it is observed on vain grounds, namely so that they may withdraw themselves from the burden and be able to frequent pleasures; because desire for wet-nurses who are well-fed multiplies fornications; and because wet-nurses more easily neglect their own offspring.

⁶ Cf. 2 Cor. 12:14.

⁷ Cf. the cited encyclical letter.

⁸ Cf. the cited encyclical letter; our little work De virtute castitatis, p. 111 ff.

⁹ Sirach 7:25.

¹⁰ Cited encyclical.

¹¹ Cited encyclical.