My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him who he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights. The question of discipline, which comes in here, cannot be passed over, for it is the essence of the whole matter. At first sight it might seem that the attitude of the new parent towards their child deprives it of discipline. Parents allow it the utmost amount of freedom compatible with other claims.

The parents treat it as an equal rather than as an inferior, apparently extending to child(ren)the same kind of equality which has only of recent years been accorded to women themselves. When that means indulgence, with an artificial protection against the natural results of indulgence, it may well be unfavourable to any sort of discipline for life. The Garden of Eden is a poor preparation for toiling in the sweat of one’s brow.

However, it is necessary to point out that the antiquated system, now decaying, was in its extreme form still more ill-adapted as a disciplinary preparation for life. A famous author of the nineteenth century, Ruskin, wrote an autobiography, called Prceterita, which deserves to live when his books on art are forgotten; in this he tells how he was brought up in his very Victorian middle-class home by loving parents who shielded him from every harm and allowed him absolutely no freedom of action.

Looking back on this training in antiquated age, he realized how sadly it unfitted him for the discipline of life and became the direct cause of misfortune when he was cut loose from his parent’s apron-strings. If the new parents leave a large scope for freedom to their child, and encourages him to act for himself instead of acting for him, he may have to suffer for his action, but he is learning responsibility and is being trained in the home for the discipline of the World.

It is not to be assumed that the parent of the Victorian days was entirely wrong and the new parents of to-day entirely right. The task is difficult for any kind of parent, and the one may fail as well as the other. Parenthood is an art, a rarer art than is commonly supposed, and while every person has sometimes wanted to be a parent, the may well think twice before one decides that one is fitted to become one, for one may be unfitted spiritually even if one is physically fitted.

The antiquated parents were capable of producing splendid child(ren); where the material was good, their methods were brilliantly successful; but parental failures were many, and when the child was of poor material it remained undeveloped or deviated in morbid directions, becoming the victim of parental fixation, a suitable patient for the psychoanalysts who flourish on their failures of antiquated—World training.

Whether for good or for evil, however, we cannot carry over the methods of the past into the present. Every age must deal with its own problems in its own way. The new generation demands the new parents. How finely successful they can prove—especially when parents are inspired by a happy love-life—some of us are already able to testify.