As in many respects each family must be a unit, and as the conflict of rival powers is no less ruinous to a household than to a state, *the family must needs have one recognized head* or representative, and this place is fittingly held by the husband rather than by the wife; for by the laws and usages of all civilized nations he is held responsible—except in criminal matters—for his wife and his minor children. But in the well-ordered family, each party to the marriage-contract is supreme in his or her own department, and in that of the other prompt in counsel, sympathy, and aid, and slow in dissent, remonstrance, or reproof. These departments are defined with perfect distinctness by considerations of intrinsic fitness, and any attempt to interchange them can be only subversive of domestic peace and social order.
*The parent’s duties to the child* are maintenance in his own condition in life, care for his education and his moral and religious culture, advice, restraint when needed, punishment when both deserved and needed, pure example and wholesome influence, aid in the formation of habits and aptitudes suited to his probable calling or estate in his adult years, and provision for his favorable entrance on his future career. Some of these duties are obviously contingent on the parent’s ability; others are absolute and imperative. The judicious parent will, on the one hand, retain his parental authority as long as he is legally responsible for his child; but, on the other hand, will train him gradually to self-help and self-dependence, and will concede to him, as he approaches years of maturity, such freedom of choice and action as is consistent with his permanent well-being.
*The child’s duty* is unqualified submission to the parent’s authority, obedience to his commands, and compliance with his wishes, in all things not morally wrong, and this, not only for the years of minority, but so long as he remains a member of his parent’s family, or dependent on him for subsistence. Subsequently, it is undoubtedly his duty to consult the reasonable wishes of his parent, to hold him in respect and reverence, to minister assiduously to his comfort and happiness, and, if need be, to sustain him in his years of decline and infirmity.