Charlotte Mason wisdom

Charlotte has my number once again. Some principles I'll be working on...

Volume 2, Parents and Children; Chapter 2 - Parents As Rulers

The Family Government is an Absolute Monarchy

Let's continue our illustration of the family as a miniature nation that has the same responsibilities, rights and requirements that nations have. The parents are like the 'government,' but the parental government is always an absolute monarchy. It makes adjustments according to the needs of its citizens, but it rules in accordance to whatever laws the parent has engraved on his own conscience. Some parents reach levels of higher thinking and are like Moses when he came down from Mt. Sinai beaming, with the tablets of The Law whole and complete in his hands. Other parents never reach those challenging heights and have to be satisfied with whatever scraps and fragments of broken tablet they can find lying at the bottom of the mountain. But whether a parent's knowledge of the law is thorough or only a fragment, he can't escape his responsibility to rule his household.

The Parent's Rule Can't Be Delegated

The first thing we want to know about any ruler is, 'Is he capable of ruling? Does he know how to maintain his authority?' A ruler who can't rule is like a biased judge, or an immoral priest, or an uneducated teacher. He's incapable of the most essential attribute of his role. It's even more true in a family than in a State government.

A king can delegate the rule of his country to someone else. But a parent's functions are so urgent that he can't delegate the job to anyone else. He can have helpers, but the minute he abdicates his rule and gives over his functions and authority to someone else, the rights of parenthood pass to that other person and no longer belong to the parent. British parents in India have felt the heartache of coming home to England only to find that their children's affections belong to someone else and their duty is owed to someone else, while they, the parents, are relegated to the role of a fairy godmother who can have fun with the children, but has no authority over them at all. And this isn't anyone's fault, because the guardians who have kept the children at home have done their best to keep the children loyal to their parents while they were away overseas.

Reasons Why Some Parents Abdicate

This is an example of one obstacle that the head of the family can stumble over. Parents sometimes think that parental authority is built into them, a trait that might lie dormant inside of them, but that can never be separated from parenthood. Such parents think it's okay to let their children do whatever they want from the time they're babies, but then they find themselves complaining along with King Lear,

'It's more painful than a snake's bite
To have an ungrateful child!'

But it was King Lear's own fault. All along, he had been stripping off the honor and authority that should have been his, and handing his rights as parent over to his children. This quote tells us why he had been doing this: his disappointment is in his children's ungratefulness. His goal and what he had been working for had been the thanks of his children. His desire for them to think of him as an affectionate father was more important to him than his duty towards them. And in proportion to how much he neglected his duty towards them, they were oblivious of their duty towards him. I suspect that parents' unrestrained desire for approval is to blame for more ruined families than any other single cause.