To pretend to the contrary would be to alter the natural course of things. The family is a natural community of life itself, in which a man and a woman are called to the donation of self in love and in the gift of life. It is the original call of social life. Authority, stability and life of relationship within the bosom of the family constitute the bases of liberty, security and of fraternity within society. The family, from its very beginning, from infancy, is the community where we learn moral values, where we begin to honor God and to make good use of freedom.
Family life is the beginning of life in society.
By God's divine plan parents and children through education tend towards the realization of human perfection within the family unit. This perfection presupposes the development, integral and gradual, of all those capacities that are found potentially in the human person, be they intellectual or moral or religious or even strictly physical. The relations within the bosom of the family involve an affinity of sentiments, affections and interests that derive above all from the mutual respect of the persons toward each other. The family, primary place for the humanization of the person, is, for human society, the first and most important community for education and formation. It has its support in paternal-filial love, the unrivaled educative force, that reveals the inviolable dignity of each person, enabling us to understand that personal dignity is the greatest gift possessed by human beings.