PARENTS and children furnish the first class of examples in which the
fondness of a close attachment by nature is elevated into a freer and
more comprehensive connection by intelligent sympathy; in which the
affection of instinct and custom is transformed into the loftier and
richer affection of friendship. This high and benign transformation
takes place in due season between all mothers and sons, all daughters
and fathers, who afford the requisite conditions for it; that is, in
all cases where they remain long enough together, and their
characters and manners are such as naturally command respect and love
from each other. Even when children are ignoble and unworthy, their
fathers and mothers may yearn over them with every strictly parental
affection; and even when parents are vicious and degraded, their
children may regard them with every strictly filial affection; but
friendship between them is generally impossible without the
co-existence, on both sides, of intrinsic worth, of those responsive
virtues which elicit esteem and dominate sympathy. The great reason
of the failure of a broad, glowing friendship between parents and
children a failure o deplorably common in our homes is the lack, in
heir characters, of that wealth, nobleness, sweetness, patience,
aspiration, which would irresistibly draw them to each other in
mutual honor, love, and joy. The only remedy for this unhappy failure
is the cure of its unhappier cause. Whatever makes characters deep,
rich, pure, and gentle in themselves, tends to make them pleasing to
each other.
It is absurd to suppose, that mean, hateful, and miserable souls will
love each other simply because they are connected by ties of
consanguinity, of interest, or of duty.
Whatever makes us suffer, especially whatever injures our finer
emotions, naturally tends to become repulsive to us, an object of
dislike gathering disagreeable associations. Even a mother, a son, a
father, a daughter, may become such an object, as is illustrated with
melancholy frequency. But when parents and children possess those
high qualities of soul which naturally give pleasure, create
affection, and evoke homage; and when they are not too early
separated, or too much distracted in alien pursuits, a firm and
ardent friendship must spring up between them. The mere parental and
filial relation will become subordinated, as a sober central thread
in a wide web of colored embroidery. The parental instinct and the
filial instinct, weaned from their organic directness, will grow more
complex and mental; and, parallel with this process, the gracious
guardians and the clinging dependants will gradually change into
companions and friends, still retaining, however, sacred vestiges and
memories of the original cords of their union. When we have allowed
proper abatement for the thousands of instances in which this
precious result is not reached, the general statement now made opens
to us a large class of beautiful friendships. In all ages there have
been myriads of mothers and sons, myriads of daughters and fathers,
who were models of devoted, happy friends. Before paying attention to
these, it will be profitable for us to notice the other cases.
Considered with reference to our subject, there are four classes of
parents and children. First, Those who are positive enemies, their
main relation being one of opposition, dislike, and pain. Undoubtedly
a chief reason for this unfortunate result is carelessness, failure
to understand and feel in advance the inestimable importance of a
right rule and fruition of the home. But a cause working more
strongly still arises from prominent vices of character, base and
wicked qualities of soul, which make harmony impossible, friction and
alienation inevitable. Disorder, fretfullness, antagonism, and
misery, pervading the house, compel its members to detest each other.
Then hatred occupies the place which should be occupied by
friendship. This is a melancholy and odious sight to see. It is a
horrible evil for its sufferers to endure. It is a terrible
misfortune and wretchedness to all concerned.
Secondly, There are parents and children who live in entire unconcern
and neglect of each other, in a mere routine of external connections
and associations. This absence of all deep personal sensibility,
either sympathetic or hostile, is not so frightful a calamity as the
rankling resentment of a rooted and conscious enmity; but it is a
lamentable misfortune. It is a sad loss, however little they may
think of it. Absorbed in other matters, giving all their affection to
business, fashion, ambition, dissipation, or to persons outside of
the home-circle, they overlook the thing most indispensable for
placid and permanent contentment; and are sure, sooner or later, to
rue their folly, in an experience of bitter disappointment.
Thirdly, there are those who, so far from cherishing hatred or
indifference, deeply love each other, and passionately long to enjoy
an intimate union in reciprocal confidence, esteem, and sympathy, but
are prevented by some unhappy impediment, some disastrous
misunderstanding or morbid pique. Many a parent yearns with
unspeakable fondness towards a disobedient and ungrateful child; the
heart breaking with agony for the reconciliation, the embrace, the
sweet communion fate withholds. Many a child profoundly desires to
fall at the feet of a cold, hard, careless parent, and with
supplicating tears win the notice, the affection, that would be so
priceless; and, sadder still, there is many an instance where both
parent and child are truly noble and affectionate, and would give the
world if they could break through the separating barrier, and lavish
their whole hearts on each other; but, in spite of these generous
qualities, their common desires and their bitter suffering, some
falsehood, some pride, some shyness, some suspicion, some chill,
intangible phantom, is set fatally between them. In every community
there are piteous tragedies of this sort, little dreamed of by those
outside, but which the bleeding hearts concerned in them feel as a
deadly drain, hastening them towards the grave.
Fourthly, Besides the parents and children who are open enemies, who
are utter indifferentists, or who, while loving each other, are kept
apart by some obstacle, there is another class, who, as free and
cordial friends, happily realize in their relation all that is to be
desired. In these examples there are ample wisdom, considerateness,
tender sympathy, and guardian strength, on the one side; ready
docility, attentiveness, obedience, reverence, and fondness, on the
other; with an exuberance of indescribable comfort and peace on both
sides. What a treasure, what an inestimable boon, what a divine
trust, what an inexhaustible delight, is such an affection between a
parent and a child! What a paradise any country would be, if such an
experience were welling up, a pure fountain of life, in every home
throughout its borders!
Few inquiries can have greater interest or importance than the
inquiry, why there is not more generally between parents and children
that warm, ingenuous, abiding affection which produces a full and
joyous friendship. A clear perception and statement of the
difficulties in the way of it may suggest the means of removing them.
And, in the outset, is it not obvious that the home affections
flourish so scantily because scanty attention is paid to the
cultivation of them? It is forever the fallacy and folly of man to
think least of that which lies nearest to him, and is the most
indissolubly bound up with his being as a cause of happiness or of
misery. He thinks most eagerly on those comparatively exceptional and
remote things, which, in consequence of their greatness or their
rarity, are the strangest and the most impressive to him. He ought to
pay the keenest heed to that which is the most important in its
influence on his life, not to that which is the most startling to his
fancy. Now, it is unquestionably true, that while there is nothing
which contributes so much to enrich or to impoverish us, to bless or
to curse us, as our domestic relations, there is scarcely any thing
which we take less pains to cultivate into all that it is capable of
becoming. In most instances, the life of the home is so close to us,
so identified with ourselves, accepted with such a matter of course
security, that we overlook the delicate conditions for preserving its
freshness and securing its increase. But, in every relation of
persons, there are two sets of conditions, corresponding with the two
sides, neither of which can be neglected with impunity. There are a
multitude of homes which are centres of irritation and wretchedness,
miniature hells to their occupants.
The first thing to be done is to turn thought to the subject, break
up the apathy of routine, secure an earnest appreciation of the facts
in the case, and then study the remedy.
One great obstacle to the desired friendships of parents and children
consists in the difficulty of a perfect sympathy between persons
marked by such differences of age, position, interest, and
experience. Those of the same years, passions, pleasures, duties,
will naturally sympathize the most easily. But in all these respects
the disparities of parent and child are equally numerous and
striking.
They look at things from opposed points of view; they judge of
subjects in the light respectively of experience and of inexperience.
This great and constant contrast must give rise to innumerable
discrepancies of opinion and of desire, provocative of disagreements,
if not of dislikes. Nature has, however, provided powerful
neutralizers for this obstacle to sympathy between those who are so
widely unlike, counteractives which forcibly tend to prevent
disagreements from breeding hostilities. These counteractives are the
profound instincts of parental fondness and filial reverence, the
first of which tends to make the parents enter into the spiritual
states of their children, and to look at things from their point of
view; and the second, to make the children, with docile duteousness,
adopt as their own the conclusions of their parents. These
counteractives ought to be carefully fostered, neither party
forgetting the differences between himself and the other, but
endeavoring to bridge those differences by the identifying powers of
imagination and sympathy. Another frequent destroyer or lessener of
the natural love of parents and children is the conflict between the
rightful authority of the former and the wilful impulses of the
latter.
Maturity, having accumulated knowledge and wisdom out of long
experience, and being set by God and nature in charge over the
headstrong instincts of ignorant or capricious youth, cannot avoid
the duty of frequently applying the curb to excessive desires, and
the spur to defective ones. A sense of chafing, an impulse to resent
and rebel, will naturally often arise. And, in every such collision
of passion and rule, there is a tendency to hostility. It is needless
to say how lamentably frequent are the examples in which this
tendency makes actual foes of those between whom the natural bonds of
love and reverence are of the most sacred character. It is evident
that parental authority is a divine trust which must be exercised
over childhood and youth. Only it should be exercised on principle,
not from caprice; for the good of the ruled, not for the
gratification of a despotic self-assertion in the ruler; with fond
gentleness, not with harshness or cruelty. And the authority of the
parent should be vindicated as far as possible by force of wisdom,
weight of character, power of persuasion; avoiding, as far as can
properly be done, every occasion of conflict, every need of a violent
issue. The child, on the other hand, ought to remember the rightful
authority of his parents, consider their greater experience, take for
granted their benignant intention, cultivate a grateful sense of
dependence and duty towards them, and foster the habit of prompt and
hearty submission to their wishes. It is a safe rule, in general, for
a boy or girl to respect and obey the father and mother, and not to
think, when they oppose the thoughtless spirit of self-indulgence,
that this parental opposition is unreasonable or unkind. To honor
one's parents is the first scriptural commandment with promise.
It is a habit which no one will ever regret. But, alas! how many a
man, how many a woman, has kneeled on the grave where father or
mother lay mouldering, and has lamented, with burning tears of shame
and sorrow, the disobedience, the disrespect, the unkindness, the
neglect, shown in earlier years! How have they longed to lift up the
faded forms from their coffins, to re-animate them, and to have them
again in their homes, that, by unwearied ministrations of tenderness,
they might atone for the upbraiding past! Let the man in the full
maturity of his age, hardened by long contact with the world, revisit
the scenes of his childhood. Let him stand by the old homestead where
fence and wall have fallen, and house and hearth gone to dust. What
presence hallows the place? Who so fills the air about him as to seem
just ready to break into palpable vision wherever he turns? It is his
mother. Overwhelmed by a flood of memories, inspired by an immortal
faith, not less than by an immortal affection, he drops on his knees,
and cries,
Mother! thou art mother still;
Only the body dies;
Such love as bound thy heart to mine,
Death only purifies.
The same moral is drawn by Sarah Tytler in her excellent book of
"Sweet Counsel" for girls, where she says, "I do not know that I ever
told my father I was once or twice very angry with him for refusing
me this or that request. My lips will never tell him now, and beg his
pardon, and assure him that I was not worthy of him then, but that I
know all at last; my hand will never clasp his hand, my lips never
kiss his lips again. But I do not break my heart; for I think he
knows all that I ever intended to tell him, and has forgiven me long
ago. I am persuaded,
"There must be wisdom with great death;
The dead shall look me through and through."
But perhaps the most fatal influence against the growth and
perpetuation of vivid friendships between parents and children is the
disenchanting effect of familiarity. A close and constant
intercourse, long continued, usually tends to make persons arid,
commonplace, uninteresting, to each other, takes away surprise, eager
expectation, and romance. There is nothing human beings so much like
as to be able strongly to impress and be impressed. This seems to
cease to be possible in a company who fancy they have struck every
string, sounded every secret, exhausted the possibilities, in each
other. A long subjection of the same persons to the same
circumstances produces a general spirit of sameness, a flagging
tedium, a want of varied attraction and stimulation. Let a stranger,
a foreign friend, any honored guest, come in, and how his presence
quickens every thing! Life shines with novel lustre, and throbs with
new energy. Every one puts his best foot forward, exerts his best
powers to interest. The fresh pleasure every one feels gives him a
fresh power of pleasing. But, ah it would be of no use, we think, to
make any effort in the dull old circle of our familiars, who can
produce no effect on us, and on whom we, in turn, can produce no
effect. And thus life in the home becomes monotonous, torpid, and
vacant. Worlds of love are every day destroyed by indifference and
repulse. If the same pains were taken to invigorate and perpetuate
the domestic affections as to secure the good-will of other persons
whom we admire or depend on, it could scarcely fail to give a
wonderful enrichment to the satisfactions of home.
This truth is especially applicable to the relation of parents and
children in our day. The old extreme of a severe exercise of parental
authority has passed away, and a new extreme of filial
insubordination and insolent self-assertion has taken its place. It
is altogether too frequent a thing now to see lads and lasses taking
their parents to task as inferiors, and demanding every service from
them. The thought of his child should be a constant delight to a
parent. When the ill-temper and ill-behavior of a child cause every
association with him in the heart of the parent to be disturbing and
painful, how can the result be otherwise than alienating and
depressing? Let there be two children in a family, one of whom is
invariably obedient, gentle, attentive, ingenuous; the other,
irritable, insubordinate, careless, secretive, and untruthful. The
former shall be idolized, while the latter is regarded with
condemnatory repugnance. The fact that a boy is your son, or that a
girl is your daughter, cannot wholly neutralize the repulsiveness of
their odious traits. When children uniformly respect and obey their
parents, and seek by every kind attention and praiseworthy effort to
please them, it is not in human nature that they should fail to be
unspeakably loved and caressed. Deferential treatment, patient
service, quick sympathy, expectant attention, an obvious desire to
please, are the most potent charms that mortals can wield. They show
that the parties are important to each other. They give life its
highest value. In their absence, all romantic color fades, and every
precious affection expires. The most effective intercourse that
vanity can establish with strangers offers nothing comparable to the
delicious quality of the experience which results when a parent and
child, of suitable character and age, are blessed with a complete
friendship. Every thought of it pours for them a sudden sunshine
through the sky, an exhilarating fragrance through the air.
Undoubtedly the affections are greatly hurt and repressed by being
regarded as obligations rather than as privileges. They must be wooed
forth by the gentlest lures. They will not come when carelessly
expected and demanded as a matter of course. The heart will be free.
It imperiously resents bonds and orders. The love of parent and child
is certainly even more a delight than it is a duty. They should be
friends, not so much because they are commanded to be such, but more
because they are mutually worthy, and because their peace of mind,
their contentment of heart, their improvement and happiness, depend
on their being such. What privilege can be imagined superior in
purity of joy and profit, to that of a young man who has for his
friend a wise and holy mother, whom he loves with enthusiasm and
confides in with an absolute devotion?
And if there be a human tear
From passion's dross refined and clear,
A tear so limpid and so meek
It would not stain an angel's cheek,
'Tis that which pious fathers shed
Upon a duteous daughter's head.