The life and work of the home ought to train religiously for citizenship, by causing each to bear his due share of the burdens of all.  Where the child has been forced to do the indolent parent’s share, to support the slothful father, he can only look forward to the time when he will be free to support only himself, and have no other than purely egoistic obligations; this is an utterly immoral conception, and one squarely opposed to good citizenship.  Where the boy or the girl has been trained to regard all toil as dishonorable, where each has been taught scrupulously to avoid every burden, they come into social living with habits set against bearing their share and toward making others carry them.  The indolent parent makes the tax-dodging citizen, as the indulgent parent often makes the place-hunting citizen who becomes a tax on the public.

The ideals of the family determine the needs of citizens.  Its conversation, its reading, its customs, set the standard of social needs.  Where the father laughs at the smartness of the artful dodge in politics, where the mother sighs after the tinsel and toys that she knows others have bought with corrupt cash, where the conversation at the meal-table steadily, though often unconsciously, lifts up and lauds those who are out after the “real thing,” the eager ears about that board drink it in and childish hearts resolve what they will do when they have a chance.  Where no voice speaks for high things, where no tide of indignation against wrong sweeps into language, where the children never feel that the parents have great moral convictions—­where no vision is, the people perish.

Yet to realize this civic responsibility of the home would be, in the greater number of instances, to remedy it.  In those other instances where there are no civic ideals, where the domestic conscience is dead, there rests upon the state, upon society, for its own sake, the responsibility to train those children so that, at any rate, they will not perpetuate homes of this type.  We may do very much by the stimulation and direction of parents.  Men need but to be reminded of their duty to make it a part of their business to train their children in social duty.

     I. References for Study

     Taylor, Religion in Social Action, chaps. vii, viii.  Dodd, Mead &
     Co., $1.25.

     E.J.  Ward, The Social Center, chap. v.  Appleton, $1.50.

     II.  Further Reading

     Lofthouse, Ethics in the Family.  Hodder & Stoughton, $1.50.

     III.  Topics for Discussion

     1.  What is the special social importance of the family?

     2.  How do children acquire their social ideals from the home?

     3.  What are the advantages which the home has as a school?

     4.  How do homes train for the responsibilities of citizenship?

     5.  Can you describe any plans of community councils in the home?