As the traditional family continually comes under attack as some arbitrary arrangement or artificial construct rather than as a wise God-given design, its great educational benefit for children goes unappreciated. It is as if the family is merely a temporary, improvised situation to be outgrown as the young discover their independence and forge their own lives without any special indebtedness to their parents or ancestors. Because of the crisis of marriage and the many ideological onslaughts it suffers from divorce, cohabitation, and same-sex unions, the idea of the family as a school of love that forms the mind, heart, and conscience of the child has become a foreign idea with little respectability. The new modern bias holds that families are only units or structures of people living together but not of abiding importance in transmitting to the next generation a precious heritage of the wisdom of an older generation.
Of the many blessings of a traditional family, the education in human nature it offers is invaluable and vital for all future personal relationships. Here the young learn the right way to relate to all people, young and old, male and female, the gregarious and the reserved, and the serious and the playful. In the context of the family, the child sees the qualities that create the bonds of affection among people and learns the importance of fidelity, friendship, charity, forgiveness, patience, and kindness in establishing close human ties. All abiding, permanent human relationships depend on the manners and morals people extend to one another—a lesson traditional families instill by their willingness to please the family members they love. When husbands and wives learn to “be subject to one another” as St. Paul teaches, courtesy blesses family relationships.
First, the normal structure of a family teaches the nature of hierarchy and instills in children the virtue of obedience to natural authority. A family is not a democracy where majority opinion prevails, but a natural order in which the old and wise govern the young and inexperienced, in which parents rule with love, justice, and mercy and children show gratitude and respect, and in which husbands and wives cherish and honor each other and remain faithful to their marital vows. As Shakespeare’s Cordelia in King Lear comments to her father about this reciprocal giving and receiving in a family, “Good my lord, / You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I/ Return those duties back as are right fit, / Obey you, love you, and most honor you.” The home is a school that teaches the art of ruling with justice and the discipline of obedience to rightful authority.
The family teaches the worth and importance of each person, and it testifies to the generosity of love. Everyone is loved for who he or she is–a gift of love and a human being of dignity created in the image of God, not because he or she is talented, gifted, or superior in some way. No matter how many children have already blessed a family and how much love has already been spent, the heart always has more love to offer for another child. Unlike the world that teaches that death and population control (abortion, euthanasia) solve social and economic problems, the family gives example that love’s creative newness and imaginative resourcefulness always have answers and ways. In St. Paul’s words, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” The home is a school that instructs everyone that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
For this education to take effect, children need to witness the model of fatherhood and the example of motherhood to learn the nature of maleness and femaleness and the complementary virtues of fathers and mothers. When this family structure remains intact, the young acquire a sense of balance and integration. They acquire both strength and gentleness, a sense of justice from a father and knowledge of mercy from a mother. They see the difference between conditional and unconditional love that Robert Frost captures in the two definitions of home in “The Death of the Hired Man” where the father remarks, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in” and the mother responds, “I should have called it/ Something you somehow don’t have to deserve.” The complementary virtues of mothers and fathers form in the young a kind heart sensitive to the feelings of others and a disciplined will power that undertakes difficult tasks. The home is a school which teaches the harmonious balance of love and discipline so that mercy always tempers justice and justice always moderates mercy.
The young witness a strong sense of duty by observing a father’s conscientious dedication to his work and commitment to providing for his family and observe a mother’s daily diligence in providing for the needs of her children. The young learn from parents a mother’s prudence in managing a budget and a father’s foresight about the future. They learn the nature of common sense, prudence, and good judgment—the distinction between necessities and luxuries and the ability to manage money. They discover that family life is the art of the possible, not the perfect. They receive an immersion in reality that cures the mind of fantasies. In G.K. Chesterton’s words from his essay “The Wildest of Adventures,” “Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind.” The home is a great school of common sense.
In a traditional family, children learn to understand and appreciate the different personalities and gifts of their brothers and sisters and grasp God’s love of variety, what the poet John Dryden called “God’s plenty.” They benefit from an education in all the seven ages of man as they have contact with younger children, older siblings, adult parents, older grandparents, and a larger extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins who all represent the wide interests, varied talents, and distinct personalities of human nature. For example, a child can receive an introduction to music through a family member who plays an instrument, learn to enjoy a favorite pastime from another relative with a passion for fishing, swimming, or hiking, or hear conversations about favorite books or authors persons recommend to one another. Chesterton refers to the family as a “gate” that leads to a house: “But the house is much larger than the gate.” The family that encompasses three generations, the seven ages of man, the four temperaments, and the myriad of talents and gifts distributed among its members is indeed not only a school but a university in its largeness.
The natural order of a family gives a child a sense of past, present, and future. As he hears his parents and grandparents reminisce about their childhood, learns of his family’s ethnic or religious heritage, or acquires a body of proverbial wisdom and moral knowledge transmitted from one generation to another, the child feels a sense of belonging to a tradition and a familiarity with the past that is part of his inheritance. As the child looks forward to the next chapters in his life, he anticipates the new adventures and inviting experiences that await him with guidance from others. Graduating from high school, learning a trade, preparing for a profession, falling in love, buying a home, and beginning a family all orient the child to a future full of surprises and special pleasures to look forward to with hope as the family prepares him for the next stages of his life with an inheritance of the wisdom of experience.
When the family is deconstructed, marginalized, or given the status of obsolete, the school of the family loses its educational force. All the many lessons a younger generation masters from participation and exposure to a traditional family go unlearned. Nothing is passed down, wisdom is not transmitted, and a rich inheritance goes unclaimed. Popular culture, public education, and unguided experience do not supply what the family best offers—time-tested proverbial truths. Without the education in the family, the young grow up unformed, uncivilized, immature, self-centered, and narrow-minded. While they may be formally educated at public institutions and colleges, their humanity suffers. While professionally trained, they may lack a clear conscience, a charitable heart, or a strong sense of duty or gratitude. If they mature unprepared or interested in marriage, indoctrinated in the idea of relative truth, or in pursuit only of pleasure or the perquisites of a career, they cannot give what they have not received and only live rather than live well or live abundantly.