Parents Should Look Ahead.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 163, 31 July 1886, Page 7

Parents Should Look Ahead.

To a weak-willed and self-indulgent mother yielding is easy and a contest is difficult. Hence she yields, foot by foot and day after day, never leflecUng that the peace she loves is purchased by the well-being of her children ; and that in spoiling them as ?he does for her own p^asmie, she is ruining them for their future content, as well a? destroying: the happiness of all who are to be associated with them. That last clause is on© that troubles her no more than the certainty of the frozen birds troubles the fky when the snow falls. To I ck so f ji* ahead as Jackey's wife rendered, wretched by the brutality $ the self -in - dulgenco of a tun per he has never been forced to curb— toMinni»"s husband, ruined by the vanity and extravagance taught a childhood and encouraged >n gv'lhood — would be to her like trying to read the message of the stars. Her business is with the immediate present ; and all beyond is lost in the dim mists of night. The future is both the unfathomableand the immaterial. If you talk to her of the fate she is preparing for her children, she answers yon with a fatuous laugh and a feeble disclaimer. "Ihey wilL come right," she says, ' ' when they are older and have more sense ;" as if all men and women were viituous, and morality did not follow the law of development and continuity like other things. If youadd the certain runhappinoss of these uncertain relations, and how others will sutler for her want of firmness and lack of .ti\\ining,-sheadds contempt to her fatuity, and says that: tl Really to think of things which may never bo and people who may not exist, is too fatiguing .and absurd." Jackey's wife and Minnie's husband do not concern her, and . at the worst they must take what they get and make the'best of their bargain, should it be bad; A morality reaching as high as the probable but not absolute future — taking in probable buo not actually present human beings — is something as far out of ordinary calculation as the cry of a bat. is beyond ■ordinal y hearing, or the damage t done to the neighbours, should- the chimney and the house catch, fire, is' absent from .the ,cook!s , mind when "she neglects to sweep down the:soot and builds a big fire with a iouL flno , Stu*oly we may class among our •wnwiitton- cruelties tb, is .weak, unwise, and <im.moi.al' spoiling of childi en, whereby the ,adult human being is made self-indulgent, , brutal}, and. generally worthless, because .the parents vhad not the, fortitude to correct nor the common sense to lead right. ._r^ jnow Zealand Farmer,"