Families

The recent discussion here about families brings to mind Maritain's observation that the history of families is no prettier than that of any other human history, including that of "the state."  Different authorities -- family is one among many, and the state is the servant of all of them -- do better at different times.  The difficulty, I suspect, is to stay with the insight that the authority of parents over their children is primary and does not depend from moment to moment on its correct or successful exercise, at least not in the main.  Most mistakes do not divest parents of the rights that are the correlative of their duties to their children; some mistakes may, either temporarily or perhaps permanently.  I can't quote anything as snappy as the poem Mark S. adduced, but I was just now motivated to look up this moving-because-realistic passage from Maritain:  "Not only the examples of parents, and the rules of conduct which they inculcate, and the religious habits and inspiration which they further, and the memories of their own lineage which they convey, in short the educational work which they directly perform, but also, in a more general way, the common experiences and trials, efforts, sufferings and hopes, and the daily labor of family life, and the daily love which pushes forward in the midst of slaps and kisses, constitute the normal fabric where the feelings and the will as of the child are naturally shaped."  Freakishly bad parenting will need to be supplanted and compensated for, but the ordinary sort, which is, after all, just ordinary, has both the right to go forward and the hope of freely given help.