We know that motherhood is a throne — but let the mother occupy it with vigilance, with love, and with a feeling for the sanctity of the mission. Obedience is not an end in itself, but a means of attaining the aims of that mission. It is therefore a duty, before imposing obedience upon the child, to define its object, its manner, and the legitimacy of the commanding authority, for not every obedience is a good one. Before a mother asks how she may make herself obeyed, she must know how to make of obedience a moral act and a good habit — in a word, how to make of it a virtue that her son or her daughter loves, and takes up with affection and conviction.

The charter of the rights of man, which granted parents "the prior right to choose the kind of education and instruction for their children," did not neglect to enjoin upon them "that they aim in education at the full development of the human personality, and at strengthening respect for the rights of man and the fundamental freedoms" (Article 23). But this respect does not mean obliging parents to renounce their right to command and to forbid, leaving the child free rein to do whatever deeds please him, without check or restraint.

Nor is it incumbent upon parents merely to watch over the child's motions and stillnesses; the scope of this watchfulness must widen until it embraces his whole envi-ronment. For everything he wit-nesses in his life at home and out-side it leaves its mark upon him; he interacts powerfully with the con-ditions of the environment around him, and this has its consequences for his future life. The impressions that take root in his mind become a goad that leads him, without his knowing it, toward a happy life or an inescapable fate. Parents must therefore observe exactness in their movements, simplicity in their lives, purity in their thoughts, discernment in their words, and reserve in their conjugal relations; and they must attend to the conduct of their son or daughter and keep watch over their goings-out and their evenings, over their companions and their intimates, over the books they read and the magazines they leaf through, over the clubs they frequent, the theaters they haunt, and the films upon which their eyes remain riveted for long

hours. Hence it is necessary for mothers to keep hold of the rights of upbringing and not surrender them to a hired governess, out of a miser's grip upon hours they spend in the cause of their own pleasure, their ease, and their private occu-pations, deserting the holiest thing God has entrusted to them, and forswearing the joy of motherhood and the rapture of tenderness in exchange for evenings passed in haunts of amusement, in the movie houses, or at the green table — so that the child grows up deprived of a mother's affection, ignorant of her care, a stranger to her tenderness, stirred by no feeling and no gratitude. Let the mother not forget that her becoming a mother is an embarking upon grave responsibilities and the beginning of a life beset with pains and hardships. And out of those trials which she accepts and bears with patience will come forth the soul of her son or her daughter — a beautiful lily and a ripe fruit, and at the last a deep-rooted glory for her, for her house, and for the homeland.

How often it befalls a mother to see her son or her daughter, the fruit of her heart, the prey of a grave illness! She spends the day and keeps vigil through the night, sleepless, her eyes wet with tears, her life embittered. A bitter pain... Yet there is a trial harder still and more grievous, one that strikes her to the quick, and over which she has seldom grieved or pitied her-self: that she herself should be the cause of her son's or her daugh-ter's ills. Yes — the mother-edu-cator, by her idle example and her flagrant neglect. As when she leaves evils and corruptions to ravage her child's soul and morals and pays no heed, until danger overwhelms her and she tastes the bitterness of the accomplished fact, and bursts into tears, and curses the hour in which it was said that a human child was born. Or when she is lax about his moral upbringing and indulges him in sundry vices, to ward off a decline in his health and to perfect the strength of his body — ignorant that he is compounded of body and soul, that the soul has the first claim to care, and that its training admits neither slackness nor indul-gence. Or when she shuts her eyes to the requirements of manners and morals in order to leave the field wide open before him for the acquisition of learning — her

aim in his success being perhaps purely material: to profit by him in the future. Wealth, health, and school diplomas are all fine things which every boy or girl ought to seek — but not before he has enjoyed an upbringing, a direction, and a correction that assure him the conduct to be desired, in accordance with the divine and civil laws. For the child counts for nothing if he is not a human being dignified in himself, good in his morals, worthy of God and of his homeland. Nor is his soul so cheap that we should gamble with it, or exploit it by the easiest road.

And is anything more painful than a family atmosphere in which the views of father and mother diverge, and which becomes the arena of their squabbles and their disagreements, in full view and hearing of their children? Often these disputes turn into disgraceful talk, ugly criticisms, scandalous expressions, and sting-ing insults — all of them deadly examples whose germs are not long in seeping into the recesses of young souls, overwhelming the noble filial feelings and stripping from them all regard and honor toward the parents, who in their turn will one day reap the results in pain and grief.

In vain shall we try, from this day on, to limit the child's openness to all the events and talk that go on around him; and in vain shall we attempt to shut him away from society. What we can do is provide him with pure airs upon which to open, and a wholesome society whose door he may enter, so that he does not come out upon the fray a raw and tender planting. Rather let him mingle with his generation in its games and its responsibilities, share its joys and its toils, and compete with his peers for first place and for reaching the goal — so that one day he may belong to his society in its very heart, and stand among its foremost figures.

Exquisite Form

Brassieres

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