The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-06-17
The Daty OF Parents Towards Children.

The Daty OF Parents Towards Children.
Do YOU ask me what are the rights of
lchildrcn? They are many; but first, it
is their right to insist that they are not
responsible for being, and that, there
fore, they are entitled to the benefits of
the wisest experience of those who are
responsible. At least, insist on that
in their behalf How shall the children
learn that which is good to know unless
it be taught by those who have them
selves the knowledge to impart? A
father who has learned the ways of evil,
either by experience or observation,
owes it to his son to warn him of the
dangers which he is liable to meet and
to show him the way to avoid them.
The mother of daughters is specially
charged with like solicitude for them.
That is a fair and reasonable division of
the immediate parental responsibilities,
though would hold no mother guilt
less of her sons wrong-going, nor ac-
quit any father of accountability for his
daughter 5 veal. Delicacy makes neces-
sary the administration of certain grave
ly important offices which specially con-
Germ the mother and the daughter, or
the father and the son. Even on this
point both the mother and the father,
as we generally find them, are open to
serious censure. 1t is no uncommon
experience of the physician to find well
grown girls cruelty ignorant of them
selves. To that extent their mothers
are blameworthy. 1t is prudish and
mistaken view of her duty to her girls
that leads the mother to keep them in
ignorance of those organic burdens
which she knows they must be called
upon to bear. The physical and mental
decadence of thousands of promising
boys is chargeable to the neglect, in
difference or false ideas of their fathers.
Indeed, a proper parental watchfulness
with reference to the physical care of
children is the exception.
would like to see parents use the
many gentle means at their command
to win the confidence of their children.
Somehow my livelier sympathies seem
to gravitate in the direction of the boys.
1t is not that lack appreciation of the
trials to which girls are born, but that |
am happy in the knowledge of their nat
ural tendency to good. That is to say,
the organization of society is such that
girls are kept comparatively apart from
those sinister evils ly which boys are
often debauched-as drunkenness, lewd-
ness, vulgar cOmpanionships and the
coarse contaminations to which an out
side life almost inevitably subjects them
1t should be the fathers pride that his
son trusts him and is willing to make of
him a companion, even if he can't al
ways unbend from the graver mood
which his years and his sense of life's
responsibilities impose on him. He
must sometimes feel the fathers anxious
care for that very boy into whose heart
he would cheerfully pour all the sun
shine of his own. If he opens his nature
the lad is sure to enter, and the larger
nature enfolds the smaller with a brood
ing fondness and a sympathy in its
struggles that must blend them both in
one for all good acts.
| know a father and son between
whom there seems to be no false re-
serve. The hardest necessities have
not, so far as | can discern, yet CON
quered the fathers youthful buoyancy.
True, there is in his face an habitual
look that has sometimes saddened me.
but | know it is only the shadow out OF
which look at me the eyes of all men
whose youth is past. He can be gay
with the lad and the lad is often silent
ly grave with him. There is a bond of
secret union between them, and | think
there never were father and son who
had less need of mediation than they
| do not know exactly what their bond
of oneness is, but imagine it he'd It's or
igin in the fathers readiness to give the
confidence he asked. They read much
the same books, quicken with very like
impulses and hold some very odd Opin-
ions in common. There the similarity
ends. In most things they are oppo-
sites. The lad is of grave and thought
full, almost taciturn, cast, with tinge
of quaint and whimsical originality.
The father, in his youth was a very
balloon of buoyancy, adventurous, rest
less, ardent and enthusiastic, neither
specially gifted nor wholly common
place. He gradually drifted into the
way of serious thought, learned to look
at life with mild serenity and to build
his future with reference to that of the
lad whom the swift-vanishing years will
have soon transformed to mans estate
and plunged into the swelling tide that
stays for neither youth nor age" Sig
nor Mdr,' IN Detroit Free Press.