A Mother Without a Past
May 13, 2010
PAUL V. WRITES:
Sarah asks whether she should lie to her girls or tell them the truth regarding her past while attempting to inculcate in them a love of virtue and the good, especially in sexual matters, as they grow into young womanhood. There is a suggestion, even by the use of the word “lie,” that not to reveal the truth of her past, which contradicts what she is teaching now, compromises the communication and to some degree the whole effort. The girls may get good moral guidance, but lie or not it would have been much better if she had been able to teach by example as well. On top of this, the attitude of the culture at large is pretty much “you’ve had your fun, why are you trying to spoil mine?”
As far as whether it would have been better to have been able to teach by example, it would have been better for Sarah if her past had been different, but the issue here is not Sarah but the instruction of her daughters. In that regard, it is only her present example that matters. Nor is that example and the instruction that goes with it unique, unavailable anywhere else, except in one respect, and that is the moral authority of the parent that comes with it.
The child has only one father and one mother. For better or worse, their moral authority is irreplaceable. The fourth commandment, to honor one’s father and mother, is the first of those concerned with human relations. It precedes the prohibitions against murder and adultery. Parents take the place of God for the child; one’s patrimony has an aura of possession about it that one’s own earnings can never have. It is given by someone higher than oneself, just as what is given by God, one’s talents, is possessed as nothing else is. I recall a talk given to prospective foster-care parents in which the speaker remarked that no matter how much one does for the child or gives, the wayward mother will drop by with a bag of potato chips for the child and he will be talking about it six weeks later. It is touching in the most wrenching way.
This authority, which is to say, the source of all goodness for the child, is the most important gift the parent can give to the child. Failing in one obligations obviously diminishes it, perhaps ultimately destroys it, which is probably why children cling to it, and why the consequences are so grave when in adolescence it is seriously compromised. I think one of the greatest losses of growing out of childhood, hardly, if ever, mentioned, is of perfect innocence and trust towards one’s parents.
The question of sexual purity rarely occurs to a child, and even when the facts of life are beginning to be known there is a distancing of the subject of sex when it comes to one’s parents. Despite cougar moms, etc., this hold true, often with the result that the child tries to take on the role of parental authority, for such authority must exist even if as a fiction. Once when I was very young I was teased by having my grandmother pretend to smoke. Smoking was hardly a sin in those days, but once I recovered from the shock, and distress, my first reaction was to order her to put the cigarette away.
If Sarah should decide to tell her daughters of her past, she may gain in integrity, a willingness to subordinate her sense of shame to the imperative of being completely honest, above board, in other words, to take a hit for the sake of her daughters, a self-sacrifice of sort. In my opinion these are nickels and dimes compared to the pure gold of trying to be the mother their daughters want, a mother without a past, for a mother with a past is their past too.
Laura writes:
This is an excellent statement. Sarah will probably find that her children don’t want to know about her past and that it is irrelevant to what Sarah believes now and to what she upholds for them. As Paul said, “It is only her present example that matters.”
Lydia Sherman writes:
One of the purposes of parents is to warn their children of the pitfalls of life. They use their own experiences to prevent future heartache of sin in their children’s lives. Jesus taught a parable of a rich man who died and went to hell. He said to Abraham, whom he saw across the great gulf, and appealed to him to send someone to warn his 5 brothers, not to come to the place of torments: Luke 16:20-31. According to the new religious thinking, those who have suffered from doing wrong in this life, are hypocrites if they warn their children not to do the same. The rich man would have been labeled a hypocrite by today’s standards, for warning his brethren not to live in such a way as to reap the eternal torment that he had reaped. Most homeschool parents have experienced the pitfalls of public school, and because of that experience, have determined not to put their children through it. This is wisdom, not hypocrisy. Every mother has a duty to keep her children from socialization and dating that will threaten her children’s innocence. It is the same with other decisions from finances to care of property. This is not hypocrisy. It is wisdom.
Laura writes:
That is a great point, about hypocrisy versus wisdom. It’s an important point because people can be dragged down by their own mistakes, or use them as an excuse for complacency.
Lydia writes:
Even the most hardened chain smoker will warn young people never to start. “I started, and now I can’t quit.” The modernists use the word “hypocrite” so that no one may teach anything unless he has immaculate perfection with no scars of the battle with the world. People who have made huge mistakes with investments or with purchases, will develop wisdom for the future and be able to tell their children not to do what they did, if they want to succeed. Why not have the same attitude toward sin? The rich man was in Hell, yet from that pit, still called out to Abraham to warn his brethren about it. “Don’t do what I did, ” he was saying, “Or you will end up in a place of torments, and it is a terrible, unbearable place.” Parents who have been corrupted in their youth experience a certain amount of torment over it, but their greatest revenge over the world is to raise their children differently and spare them the torment of a wasted youth.
