PREPARATION FOR FATHERHOOD.
The Command to “Replenish the Earth.”—Preparation for
Motherhood More Written About than Preparation for
Fatherhood.—Questions Which Would Test the Fitness of
Young Men for Marriage.—Parents Should Know the Character
of Young Men Who Desire Their Daughters in Marriage.—Many
Young Men of Startling Worth.—The Improving of a Good
Heritage.—Effects of Bad Morals and Wayward Habits.—Effects
of Tobacco and Alcoholics.—How Young Women Help to Contribute
Bad Habits in Young Men.—The Years of Rooting and Weeding
Necessary.—Attaining the Best.—The Father Reproduced in His
Children.
“Be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth.”
Webster defines “Replenish”: To stock abundantly, to make complete or
perfect.
“It is a sad fact that many persons assume the responsibility of parents
without any clear appreciation of its obligations. To provide a shelter
from the storm, a proper amount of rations, and an irregular and
spasmodic administration of discipline, chiefly regulated by the nervous
susceptibility of the parents, rather than by the deserts of the child,
is their idea of parental duty.”
Far more has been written in these latter days concerning the preparation
for motherhood, than the preparation for fatherhood. One would almost
conclude that no especial fitting were needed to prepare young men to
become parents. Because of the lack of strong public sentiment along
these lines, the many sons come to marriage with no adequate idea of the
duties and responsibilities before them, with no thought or knowledge of
what they have, or should have, to give to the next generation.
Suppose a set of questions something like the following were handed to
young men the week before their marriage, what think you would be their
answers?
Do you bring to your bride the same purity that you expect from her?
What in your life and habits have you hidden, and would you still hide
from her?
What mental reservation do you make in respect to your liberties after
marriage, to indulge these habits?
What companions have you, whom you would not care to bring to your home
or introduce to your wife?
What “wild oats” have you sown that have left their seeds in your
constitution to be transmitted to your children, and they in turn to
their children down through the generations?
How many hours of thought have you given to the wise, earnest fitting for
good fatherhood?
Do you, in the sight of God, consider yourself fit to become the husband,
which all this close relation involves, of a pure, sweet, true woman?
These questions are simple questions, and should in every allowable
marriage, admit of but one answer. No father or mother should ever give
their consent to companionship, much less to marriage of their daughters,
with men whom they have any reason to suppose could not answer these
questions unblushingly, and with honest eyes, in the presence of the
woman they seek as wife.
Dear young woman, you should know, as you value your peace of mind,
what the young man really _is_ to whom you plight your troth. What he
may _seem_ to be to you, what you have idealized him to be, is not
sufficient. You owe it to yourself and to your unborn children, to know
what he _really_ is; and if he resents the questioning of your parents,
say the “no,” now, rather than live it, in agony, all your after life.
Much that might have been said in this chapter I have already said in the
chapter on the choice of a husband, and we will not repeat.
That there are many young men, noble, true, conscientious and pure in
their sterling manhood we know; and for such as these the warnings in
this chapter are not written. That there are parents who fully realize
the necessity of training their children for parenthood, and have all
the way along given line upon line, precept upon precept, toward this
training, we all know; but that the number is not greater, we sadly
deplore.
Young men need to realize that sowing wild oats will never bring a
harvest of wheat; and that a bed of thistles will never yield a garland
of flowers. Like will produce like, as long as the world stands, and we
can never change it.
In preparation for fatherhood there is much that the best among young men
would wish to change in their lives, and they have this to comfort them;
that by painstaking perseverance any resolute person can do very much
toward eradicating inborn tendencies, and hereditary evils. Poor soil
well enriched and carefully tended, watered with the dew of God’s grace,
will bring a marvelous harvest of good things, and transform all future
products; while the best of fields, with the wisest of care and tillage
in the years past, may grow to weeds and wastefulness in this generation,
if neglected. Therefore, while we have much to be grateful for in a good
heritage, and that we have a name which, unlike poor little Patsy’s, will
wash, yet too much dependence cannot be placed upon this. “Say not that
ye have Abraham to your father; I say unto you that God is able of these
stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”
Young man, what sort of soil are you preparing for the growth of the next
generation, when you allow, for a _little_ time even, looseness of morals
and wayward habits? Late hours, tippling, mingling with the unclean, the
coarse jest and the coarser practice following, are not good soil for the
implantation later on of the higher virtues; the danger is, the desire
for such implantation will be lost, or if it in a measure remains, the
roots of the old weeds are there, and the soil is cursed with the noisome
seeds which will spring up and choke the wheat. Mayhap both may grow
together, and a harvest of wheat and tares be gathered, but at what a
cost of time and strength, that might have been used in better things.
The use of alcoholics and tobacco enfeeble the mind and constitution, and
this enfeeblement accentuated is transmitted to the next generations.
Many wives are struggling along in ill health that is directly traceable
to the inhaling, night after night, of the breath of the husband,
poisoned with nicotine. Many a little one is wailing through its infancy,
and if it have strength sufficient, inherited from its remote ancestors,
to pull it through, yet will it all its life suffer from its antenatal
and postnatal poisoning; and the chances are that as soon as it is old
enough it will take up the habit which is already acquired, to pass down
along the line a more and more enfeebled heritage.
But the young are not all to blame, they have not been instructed. They
have floated along, many times unmindful of the rapids they were nearing,
and have not awakened until they were engulfed. And our daughters are not
guiltless in _this_ thing even. How many times when the escort asks, “Is
tobacco offensive to you?” have our thoughtless girls answered, “Oh, no,”
when at heart it was repulsive and sickening. By and by, after months of
endurance it becomes bearable, and they can make the reply with a degree
of truthfulness; for tobacco, like sin,
“Is a monster of such frightful mien,
That to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft familiar with its face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
When our dear girls have strength of character sufficient to say in
response to such a query, while lifting frank honest eyes: “Shall I
answer your question honestly? then I must say, it is very offensive to
me; for I know it does you harm, and I know as well that I cannot breathe
the fumes of it _even_ for an hour without physical harm to myself.”
There is not one young man in a hundred, who would not rejoice in the
courage of such a girl, and ten chances to one, he would be telling his
companions of the brave stand she had made, and exulting in it.
Young men of high attainment and noble purposes, there is still something
for you to do, to transmit the best to your progeny. Make the noblest in
you still nobler, root out the weeds, attain greater heights every year,
seek nobler companionship among books and men, choose for your mate the
woman whose desires and ambitions are like your own, and your children
will be a blessing to you and the world, and may well “rise up to call
you blessed.”
To the other class of young men, we have only to say, there should be
before them many years of rooting and weeding and killing out, and hard
preparation, before they should dare ask any good women to be their
wives. Aye, more, before they should even dare to ask a woman like
themselves, for think of the double inheritance of such unfortunate
children as might be theirs; and think again how the world is cursed with
such disinherited humanity now.
The motto
“Without halting, without rest,
Pushing better up to best,”
should be the sentiment of every young man, in view of his preparation
for fatherhood. It is a lamentable fact that children have as often
reason to lament their parentage, as parents their wayward children. But
it is probably a merciful thing that most children of this class never
realize it—merciful at least for them and their parents, but not for the
coming generations.
Remember you are to reproduce yourself, and in large measure what you are
yourself that will your children be. Measure yourself carefully, take
account of stock and see what there is that you would have different,
what you would make better, what you would eradicate, what new qualities
you would engraft. The little children, to be, in your home who are to
call you father, are not only to copy you when they are large enough and
wise enough in their love to wish to be like you; but they come into
existence with inborn tendencies, that perforce make them like you,
whether they will or not. Happy the parents whose children never regret
their inheritances.
“It isn’t all in the bringing up,
Let folks say what they will,
You may silver polish a pewter cup,
But it will be pewter still.”