Today is November 1, 2024, and this is William Michael of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. This evening, I had the pleasure of a great consultation meeting with a couple of Catholic parents, and we talked about a bunch of issues relating to homeschooling and family life. As we had a discussion, it reminded me of an important topic, and it was one that, as I began talking about it, lots of memories started to come up. When our meeting ended, I said, “That’s a topic I think I need to talk about.”
I’d like to take some time tonight to talk about an issue that my wife struggled with quite a bit throughout our years of parenting, and really, which she probably, to some degree, continues to struggle with. It’s the difficulty of raising children to listen to and obey the voice of their mother. It’s one thing for kids to grow up and listen to and obey the voice of their father, but it’s a very different thing for the children to learn to listen to their mother.
I remember that Dania and I struggled with this quite a bit, and I used to watch as she interacted with the kids. I could see what the differences were between the way she interacted with the kids and the way I interact with the kids. Now, when we think about the commandments, the commandment tells us, “Children, honor your father and your mother.” It doesn’t say, “Children, honor your father.” It doesn’t say, “Children and women, honor the head of the household.” It says, “Children, honor your father and your mother,” to show honor to your father and your mother.
Like I said, while I know this isn’t true everywhere, in many Christian families, the children learn to honor their fathers, and there are a number of reasons for that, some of which are accomplished or brought about by the mother, because she raises children to honor their father. But mothers often overlook the duty to teach their children to honor them, the mothers, as well.
So I’d like to talk about this a little bit because it’s an interesting topic, and I think it is likely a concern for many other families, as it was a concern for my wife and I as we’ve been raising our kids. So, first of all, why is it, why is there a difference? Why is there a difference?
I have to make some assumptions, so bear with me as I just share some assumptions, because this isn’t a talk for a general audience. This is a talk for families that are something like mine. In my family, I have worked for 26 years to provide for my wife and children. My wife helps me constantly, but she is never under any pressure to earn a living. That’s my responsibility. My wife’s primary responsibility is to manage the house and the children. Whatever she does helping me is gravy, but her primary responsibility is managing household activities and the children.
This responsibility that women have is just so bizarre, because it’s disrespected in modern society, and yet it’s really so important on so many levels, especially as the kids get older. It’s often disrespected because we look at this woman who’s 24 or 25 years old. She’s chosen to stay at home and have children rather than go into the workplace or continue her education, and we see this woman pregnant or nursing, with a bunch of kids running all over the place. She looks exhausted half the time. And we say, “Oh, who would ever want to do that? Why would a woman want to do that? I would never want to do that.”
It’s true, those early years of motherhood can be very difficult, but women are young at those times. They’re strong and healthy. If they weren’t healthy, they wouldn’t be able to have children, and they can bear it. There’s a time for childbearing in life, and then that time ends, and women move into a new phase of life where they’re no longer pregnant, no longer nursing, no longer carrying little ones around, chasing toddlers, and so on. They have older children, and life calms down, and they’re able to turn their attention to adult women’s things.
So it’s not an either-or decision that women have to make. It’s simply a question of when—when is the appropriate time for different interests and pursuits in life? For my wife, from the time we got married back in 1998, we had our first child in 2000, and we had our last child in 2014, and that was it. The childbearing years ended. Since then, since, I think it was 2014—yeah, that’s right. Since then, my wife has not been pregnant. There’s no more nursing babies. There are no more little ones in the house.
My wife is running around town with kids, with adult children, working with me, helping with things. And, you know, she’s got a life that’s very active, very rich, that she would not have had if she had chosen not to give those younger years of her adult life to childbearing. So it’s much more complex than modern society allows it to be because they choose to mock and criticize the young mother rather than think down the road of how life changes and how that woman’s life improves.
My wife’s life today—I can’t even imagine what my adult children would be doing if it wasn’t for my wife being available to help them, not even as a mother when they were young, not even as a homeschooling mother when they were school-aged, but as a stay-at-home mother who’s always available, always able to help, always a text message away, always a phone call away, always present to help an adult kid get through a problem at school or get through a problem with work or get through something with insurance or taxes or who knows what.
My wife, as a 49-year-old stay-at-home woman, is now helping all of our children transition into adulthood, and she’s working with them as much as she ever did. They’re all over the place. My son Jonathan just got his first house. He’s 24 years old. He’s an officer in the military. Just got back from Fort Sill, Oklahoma. My daughter Elizabeth is in Colorado. She’s about to become a helicopter pilot, a medical pilot in the army. My son David is at UNC Wilmington, being deployed to Syria in February. My son Samuel is at Fort Jackson, down in South Carolina in basic training. My daughter Mary is managing a Walgreens store in a town outside Charlotte, because she chose that she wants to work and not go to college.
They’ve all done different things. They’re all in different places—in college, ROTC, out of college, military, civilian life—and there are five more kids coming up behind them. My wife is as busy as ever helping all of these kids successfully transition into adult life, and our family is as closely knit and appreciative of our relationships, probably more appreciative than we’ve ever been.
I would say that even though, you know, I’m sort of the invisible benefactor behind the activity that goes on, my wife is the hub around which all of this activity moves, and, really, my adult kids are doing so well—transitioning into adult life, finding their vocations, getting through difficult challenges, getting themselves on solid financial footing. It just would not be possible without my wife being available to them all day, every day, to do all kinds of things that they need done to help them transition well into their 20s.
Now, 15 years ago, my wife could never have envisioned the life that she’s living now. When my wife was in the midst of her childbearing years, she had older women shaking their heads at her, telling her she was going to kill herself if she kept having kids. The kids were born 16 months apart, 18 months apart, 15 months apart, for 14 years, like I said, and then it stopped. All these warnings and criticisms and all of these discouraging comments and remarks were all proven false, and my wife lives quite a beautiful life as a 49-year-old Catholic woman, mother of 10, lay Dominican, now just moving into a new phase of life.
When she was younger, when we were younger, when our kids were younger, my wife struggled with discipline when I wasn’t around. When I’m in the house, I used to joke and tell the kids that I was the Holy Spirit, because everyone’s behavior changed whenever I walked into a room. Even if I just made a sound, even if I just cleared my throat, kids would move, kids would quiet down, kids would stop what they were doing, and so on. My kids always respected me; even to this day I don’t have a kid who talks back.
Sure, we had issues with our oldest children, because we had people around us outside our family actually encouraging them to be bad and defiant. Our younger kids have learned from our older kids’ mistakes, but I don’t have many arguments with my kids anymore. I’ve got five kids at home, I think a 17-year-old, a 15-year-old, a 13-year-old, a 12-year-old, and a 9-year-old. We don’t argue. We don’t have any fights. I tell them to go to bed. I tell them what time I want them to get to bed, and I just get, “Good night, Dad. Okay, Dad. Good night, Dad. See you tomorrow, Dad.” We really don’t have many conflicts or controversies, and the kids generally respect me. Even if they might not like some things I do or disagree with me, they’re respectful.
I can say that my children honor their father. I feel that as their father; I feel that my children honor me and bring me honor. My wife, on the other hand, has throughout these years often found herself being taken advantage of, not listened to, disrespected, and so on. And there are reasons for this, and I’m assuming that other women might struggle with something similar. Now, there are some women who are as strong as men when it comes to demanding respect, demanding the kids listen, demanding the kids do what they’re told. There are some women who make their authority very clear, maybe even to a fault at times, who don’t have trouble with this issue. But I think many Christian women who are humble and gentle and sweet, and they see themselves as just being able to sacrifice through any difficulty and not fuss about things—I think those are the ones who struggle to handle these things.
They think about it, and they may think about these stronger women, you know, yelling at their kids, throwing shoes at their kids, like my grandmother used to do, and they say, “I’m not going to do stuff like that. I’m not going to scream at my kids.” And, you know, I see a mother whacking a kid in the middle of the grocery store, things like that. Yeah, those kids might respect and listen to their mothers, but their mothers are monsters. And, you know, a beautiful Christian woman who’s quiet and modest, she’s not going to act like that, and those are the women who tend to get taken advantage of a little bit by their kids, maybe not a little bit, maybe a lot.
And my wife was a woman like that. My wife, you know, if something is a mess, she’d rather just clean it up and not say anything if the kids don’t listen. You know, she might get annoyed, but she’d rather just avoid conflict, get things in order, and move on with the day. And while that sounds like a good plan, and it certainly is effective at just allowing her to move forward, it’s neglecting that commandment, “Children, honor your father and your mother.” And so we’ve got to take it seriously because children do need to learn to listen to their mothers.
Now, what normally happens is the fathers try to take it upon themselves to make the children honor their mothers, and that’s possible to a degree, yeah, but only if Dad is around. If Dad is out at work, as he should be, it’s very difficult for the kids, especially young kids, to fear or think about what Dad says when Dad’s not around. And so that doesn’t work too well. At some point, the kids are going to have to learn to honor their mother, not for their father’s sake, but for their mother’s sake.
Now I could speak ideally and say, “Well, really, children should honor their mother for God’s sake, right? A child who’s filled with piety, a child who’s devout, a child who fears God, wants to please God, doesn’t want to offend God.” A child like Aloysius Gonzaga or Dominic Savio—those children, they will honor their mother for God’s sake. They’re saints. Those individuals are extraordinary; they’re saints, they’re exclusive examples throughout the whole history of the Christian era. They’re not normal.
And so no, we shouldn’t expect that any of our children are going to act like Dominic Savio or Aloysius Gonzaga any more than we should expect that our children are going to go outside in the backyard and speak with the Blessed Virgin Mary, as St. Bernadette did, or the Fatima children did. Those are special graces, private revelation, special graces given to individual children in history, and there have not been very many of them, though there have been billions of Catholic children.
And so when we think about our children, we need to think about what might be considered the normal situation for children learning to honor their mother, because there is sufficient natural reason, and this is called natural piety. There is sufficient natural reason for children to honor their mother, even without religion. And that’s what I’d like to talk about. Because the religious aspect is dependent on God’s grace. We don’t have the power to cause our children to act under the influence of God’s grace. Only God can infuse the graces of faith, hope, and charity into a soul. That’s not in our power, and we’re left to deal with nature, and that’s what I’d like to talk about now.
The first question is, why do children owe their mother respect and honor? Why do children have a responsibility? Why does God command them to honor their mother? The answer that most women, probably most men, will usually give is that, well, they wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for their mother. Their mother brought them into the world. Their mother bore them for nine months through great personal sacrifice and discomfort, then went through the agony of birth pangs to bring them into the world, risking her life for her children. And then, after the children were born, she sacrificed another year or more of her life, nursing the children, changing diapers, bathing the children, caring for the children when they were sick, on and on and on. These children have a lifelong debt to their mothers. They are obligated to honor their mothers simply because of the work that their mothers did bringing them into the world. If that’s all that a child’s mother ever did for him or her, it would be sufficient to command their respect and honor for the rest of their lives.
So that’s the main argument, and I know many people will suggest that as what should be the motivation for a child’s respect and honor for his mother, but I would object to that and say even that requires a great deal of virtue. That’s quite an expectation—to have a child act day in, day out, for years and years and years, constantly keeping in mind the sacrifices his mother made for his birth and early life, when he was unconscious of that time, when he was unconscious of her service and sacrifice, during that time when he was unconscious of those benefits. It’s very difficult to ask a 6-, 10-, 14-, or 17-year-old child to honor his mother because of benefits that, really, he received but didn’t experience—that’s very difficult.
And again, yes, an extraordinary historical example might be found of a kid who lived like that and honored his parents virtuously. But it’s not going to be normal. So even though it’s true that children should honor their mother because she brought them into this world safely, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that to actually govern the children’s daily behavior, because, as I said, they didn’t really experience those benefits—they received them, but they didn’t experience them.
So what should it be? How should mothers lead their children to respect and honor them, not by being obnoxious, obviously, not by lording everything over them and giving the kids a guilt trip every time the mother does something, but really, within the context of a humble, gentle, quiet Christian life, how can mothers lead their children to honor and respect them? That’s the question. So I don’t think appealing to religion is a good answer. And I don’t think appealing to childbirth is a good answer.
I think that women have something else to appeal to that they need to learn to take very seriously, and it has to do with the virtue of justice. If there’s one thing that my wife and I have argued about through the years, it’s been the topic of justice, because we live in a generation that is not conscious of the concept of justice and how important it is in every area of our lives, in every area of our lives. Now if you go back—no one does this, but we need to—if you go back and read the writings of the great ancient philosophers, the Stoics, certainly Aristotle and especially Cicero, we’ll learn a concept that was taught very clearly among pre-Christian people, virtuous pagans, as they’re called.
And it’s this concept of benefits, and it really is the foundation of all social life and etiquette, this notion of benefits. The idea is that if I receive a benefit from someone, I owe them a benefit in return. Anything that I receive, I’m obligated to return by doing some good deed of my own for that person, and it’s a constant giving and taking, sharing of benefits, that makes for a well-mannered, just society. This is taught in etiquette books, but really, it comes from moral philosophy; it’s a matter of justice.
So, for example, if you go back into, let’s say, a Victorian era age, and you see the gentleman doing his good deed, you know, helping a woman up into a carriage, helping a woman carry something into the house, whatever, you’ll see the woman say, “Thank you, sir,” but you’ll hear the man say, “Much obliged, ma’am.” And it’s that concept of being obliged to do something, and what it means to be obliged to do it is to actually be obligated to do it. I must do this. I must. I’m obliged—short for obligated—to do this, and it’s because it relates to this constant exchange of benefits, a constant giving and taking of benefits.
Now, if you think of a person who’s obnoxious, a person whom you can’t stand to be around, I can tell you very clearly why it’s difficult to be around him. It’s because he takes and never gives. He’s not just, and people who live like that are insufferable. There’s no way to have a relationship with them, because they will simply drain every resource in the community, like a black hole. I actually call them black holes. And so there are some people whom we cannot have social relations with, because they will literally take everything from everyone, and society can’t function with people like that. They need to be sent away. For there to be good, orderly, beautiful, just, well-mannered, polite society, the fundamental virtue of that society is a sense of obligation, of giving and taking benefits, and constantly repaying for benefits received.
It inspires people to be generous. It inspires people to be generous when they know that, in their time of need, the people that they’re generous to will help them. Now, as I say that, you may say, “Oh, but Jesus says give and seek nothing in return.” That’s right, because that’s the spirit of one who gives. It’s the spirit of one who gives, to give and not even concern himself with receiving anything in exchange for that, because that’s the spirit of a generous person, and that’s the disposition we should have. We should be willing to give even when there is no expectation of a return, because that’s grace, that’s generosity.
But that person who receives at the same time, even though I may give and expect nothing in return, that person who receives should say to himself or herself, “I have an obligation to give something in return. He’s done this kind deed to me. I’m indebted to him, not financially, socially.” That’s what etiquette is all about. That’s what good manners are all about. It’s about this giving and taking of benefits.
So, why in the world am I talking about this? Because this is the problem with mothers and children. Children tend to be black holes, and they need to be trained to become well-mannered and polite. They need to be trained to become just. They need to be trained to become sensitive to benefits received. They need to learn that when they receive benefits, they have an obligation to repay favors. That’s how society works. There’s a constant giving and taking of favors. Children need to be taught this, because human nature is not inclined to be just. Human nature is not inclined to be well-mannered. If you leave people to themselves, you’ll have ghetto culture. You won’t have polite society; you’ll have ghetto culture.
Children need to be taught to be well-mannered, and this is the actual problem in families where the children don’t honor and respect their mothers. And the mothers can’t just wink at this or ignore it or offer it up and just keep moving through their day. They’ve got to understand that this is a responsibility. They have to teach their children this concept. Now notice, they’re not teaching their children the need to worship their mother. They’re teaching their children a general concept of piety, a general concept of good manners. It’s a general principle that you need to show respect to those from whom you receive things. And you’re going to practice that. You’re going to practice this virtue with your mother. You’re going to learn to cultivate this well-mannered spirit through your relationship with your mother.
And your mother has to make sure that she is focused on teaching her children good manners, teaching polite society, teaching good etiquette. That’s what this is about. Now, fathers tend to be strict with respect to justice. You hear fathers complaining all the time. I get frustrated all the time with my kids. I’m very sensitive to matters of justice, because I’m always working. I’m always working to earn an honest living, which is very difficult. And I take all the money that I’m able to scrounge up in the world, and I bring it home, and I lay it at the feet of my wife and children, and I expect something in return, or I would like something in return again, not because I ignore what Jesus says. I do it because I love my family. I chose to be a husband and a father, because I want to be like God. But at the same time, I know that my children and my wife owe me respect and honor, because there’s hardly anything they do all day long that’s not being done with money that I’ve worked to earn and hand over to them. And so there’s this natural piety where both the wife and the children show honor and respect to the husband and father. That’s good manners, and because the fathers tend to have to do unpleasant things in order to obtain this honest money, and they’ve got to sacrifice, and it’s frustrating and it’s difficult and it’s tiresome, and there’s a thousand other things that they would prefer to do, that they have to sacrifice. They’re especially sensitive to this, to this social obligation; they’re especially sensitive, and they tend to demand it more than women do.
And again, I’m talking to families like my own. So if, if, if you’re a woman listening to this, who works three jobs, and your husband sits at home and he bakes cookies all day, I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to families like my family. My wife has no obligation to go into the world and earn money. I’m talking about families like my family. Just to be clear, men in a family like mine tend to expect that treatment from their wives and children, and I think they demand it as to a degree they should. They should expect it, and they should in some way, communicate again. They don’t have to communicate, “You owe me. You owe me. You owe me.” It’s a general principle of good manners.
When a parent gives a child something, what do they do? They tell the child to say, thank you? So the mother will give the child his breakfast, and she may cut up his pancakes for him and slide the dish in front of him and say, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What do you say?” And the child will say, “Thank you, Mommy.” You see, the child is being taught to acknowledge the receipt of benefits by saying that you don’t just grab No no, you don’t just grab the bowl and start shoving the pancakes into your face as if you just earned that somehow you are given that by your mother, and you should stop yourself, acknowledge the source, and say, “Thank you, Mommy.” And there’s more. You should also stop and fold your hands and give thanks to God, because actually, Mommy contributed to that breakfast being prepared, but Mommy didn’t create the wheat plant and keep the whole world in order. There’s a whole chain of benefits that have been received, starting from God the first cause, and coming all the way down to us, down to this pancake that you are not responsible for, and you need to stop, take a minute, and acknowledge that, and give God thanks.
And so we teach our children not just to not just to say grace, not just to thank God. We also teach them to thank their mother. We should also teach them to think about and thank their father, and so on, to think about, to be conscious of the people who have provided this and made this available to you, and to show respect to them by giving thanks. And so gratitude. Gratitude is the virtue that acknowledges the receipt of benefits for which one did not pay. We teach our children that it’s very simple. I don’t know a mother who doesn’t stop her children when they receive something and tell them to say, thank you. So we get this. We understand this concept sometimes, but mothers tend not to push this in a reasonable way, in a just way, in an educational way; they tend not to maintain this when they’re doing things in the normal daily grind of everyday family life. They tend to not do this. They don’t have time. They’re busy. They want to get the table cleared. They just want the kids to eat their meal. They want to get the kids to bed for their naps. They want to get the living room vacuumed, they’ve got to run to the grocery store. They’ve got doctor’s appointments to get to. They don’t they don’t have time for good manners and for polite society. And this is where things start to get out of control.
The kids start to get benefit after benefit after benefit, and they’re not they’re not helped to be conscious of the source, to give thanks, to be grateful. They’re just grabbing and they’re consuming and they’re taking, and they’re acting like this is their right. They’re acting like this is normal that you get up in the morning and start eating, and then you start playing, and then you turn the TV on, and then you go grab toys out of the toy box, and you throw them on the floor, and you go grab other toys, and then you go back into the kitchen and start eating again. And you open the refrigerator door and you grab something, and you start drinking. And you spend your life consuming and taking and taking and consuming, and there’s no there’s no gratitude, there’s no remuneration, there’s no recognition, there’s no consciousness of where these things are coming from. There’s no gratitude. And this child begins to turn into a black hole, into a monster, a poorly behaving, Ill mannered, impolite, rude, ungrateful, selfish little brat and and there’s a there’s a cause of that, and it’s because He’s being given and given and given with no obligation to acknowledge the source of the benefits that he’s receiving, and so he becomes what’s called a spoiled brat, and this is the problem.
But what I want you to see is that this isn’t a problem between Mommy and her kids. This is a this is a general moral issue that Mommy needs to teach and enforce. It’s a general moral issue that Mommy, who’s with the kids all day, needs to teach make them conscious of help them to always think about and enforce, and if she doesn’t, she’s going to raise black holes. She’s going to raise spoiled brats who disrespect not only their own mother but anyone and so that’s the issue. And I think if mothers think about it in that way from a general principle, and understand that they’re the ones with their children all day, they can’t allow themselves to get caught up in what I call chicken work when I talk to my wife about this, you can’t just be a chicken, clucking around the house all over the place, just constantly moving like a chicken. You’ve got to be thoughtful, and you’ve got to have priorities, and you’ve got to realize that the moral training of the children is more important than all of the chores getting done. The moral training of the children, the moral instruction of the children, is actually the principal duty of the mother, even before household tasks of her own get done. And that’s, I think, a difficult thing for mothers to handle, because they’re often so concerned about other things, all of which are good, that they tend to just accept the situation when they shouldn’t accept that situation.
They need to make it the priority, and if anything is going to be sacrificed and. Needs to be other things, because they can be taken care of at other times. And if, in all honesty, if household tasks and household chores become too much for a mother to handle, if she’s got six kids and she’s home schooling and taking care of all these children, there’s a time where the husband and wife need to sit down and figure out whether some household help might be necessary, because the mother can’t leave these things undone, these moral priorities, and the women have to take responsibility for this moral instruction.
So the reason why children tend to not listen to their mother is because the mothers don’t make the children listen to their mothers. And again, this is not by being some big, loud, obnoxious monster of a woman. I told you, I grew up with a grandmother who would pull a flip flop off her foot and throw it across the table. You know, we all listened to Nanny Taylor. We all listened when she talked, but she was, she was crazy, and that, we’re not, we’re not going to do that. There’s a much more subtle, a much more appropriate way to handle this, and it can be done quietly and politely by any mother, but it’s something mothers have to always think about.
And here’s what mothers need to do. Mothers need to teach their children, as I said before, to be grateful when they receive anything. They need to learn to be grateful. They need to be taught and trained to live conscious of the fact that they are constantly receiving things from others. They need to be constantly reminded. It needs to be constantly talked about. The mothers need to lead the children in thinking like this. The mothers need to lead the children in showing gratitude, even to excess, for the sake of instruction. The mothers have to model this spirit of gratitude. They have to model it by how they respond when others do nice things for them. They have to show the children how they should act when someone does something nice for them. The mother should model it and model it and model it and model it, even to excess, for the sake of instruction.
And this can easily be practiced between a wife, between a mother and her husband. It can be practiced every day between husband and wife in the presence of the children. The mother can, by her respectful behavior towards her husband, she can model for her children how they should behave towards others from whom they receive good things.
And so that’s the first thing mothers have to ask: Do I model a spirit of gratitude and good manners and polite society that my children can learn from by just imitating me? That’s the first thing: saying thank you, expressing gratitude in a thousand different ways, writing thank-you notes, visiting people who’ve done something nice for you to repay them a favor, modeling good manners, modeling just behavior, modeling polite society for the children.
“Come on, kids, we’re going to take a ride. We’re going to visit that lady who sits in front of us at church. She’s in the, she’s in the hospital today. You know how nice she is to us? You know how she always says hello to us and how she gave you a rosary that one time, and she’s always so friendly. She’s having a hard time. We’re going to go visit her and repay a favor to her for her kindness to us. Come on, kids, you can come with Mommy, and Mommy will show you how to be polite.”
“We’re going to write a thank-you note. We’re going to send Christmas cards, and in each Christmas card, we’re going to write a little note and say how much we appreciate something that this person has done for us. At Thanksgiving, we’re going to take time at the table to take a minute and just pray and give thanks for a few minutes and just think about benefits that we’ve received and take some time and pray for those people who have done good to us and ask God to bless them and ask God to help us to return the favor to them.”
So the mother, in all of the time that they spend with their children, they have a unique opportunity to model good manners and just behavior for their children. So that’s a positive. They can model what children should do by their own good manners.
But here’s the hard part. The hard part is that women also have to make sure that their children are showing the same respect and acting with justice and being considerate, behaving with good manners, being grateful, and so on, by the control of their own benefits. This is the real difficult thing, I think, for women. They have to be careful in controlling the benefits that they offer to their children. They have to be careful because it’s very easy for Mommy just to give and give and give and give and give and give and give and give and never, ever, ever require the children to stop and acknowledge and show respect and give honor and be grateful. It’s easy for Mommy just to give and give and give and give and do all the cleaning and do all the straightening and do all the fixing and do all the work and do everything just because she doesn’t want to be bothered with the moral instruction, and it’s not a good thing, and she’s going to raise spoiled brats who not only disrespect others, but disrespect her.
And this is where moms need to be careful, and I would this is really the point of this talk is to get to this point, mothers need to give their benefits thoughtfully and purposefully and justly. Now, one thing that my wife and I did with our kids, really, my wife did this because, you know, often I would help my wife to find a solution, but then she would have to actually put it to work when she was home with the kids. And so what we did was we divided up our schedule so that there are always blocks of time, blocks of scheduled time, and every block of scheduled time was followed by some time where benefits were available to the kids. So, for example, if the kids get up in the morning and they get up and they get themselves down to the table where we’re going to have morning prayer, they get to the table in time, Mommy would have a cup of tea or a cup of hot chocolate, waiting for the good kids who did what they were supposed to do and got themselves downstairs and sat at the table.
My wife and I would pray morning prayer together, and all the kids had to do is be there. If the kids got up and got themselves down to the table for morning prayer, they got a treat, and if they didn’t, they got no treat. If they came downstairs 15 minutes after we said prayer, they didn’t get a chance to have a cup of tea or a cup of cocoa, because that’s for kids who come to morning prayer. And so there’s a time to do something, and then there’s benefits available to those who do it, and if the kids choose to not do it, then they forfeit those benefits.
And again, the difficult thing is for Mom to enforce the rule and not to try to be everybody’s favorite person, saying yes to everything. Then we enter into the morning period where, let’s say it’s nine o’clock, and we’ve got from nine o’clock until lunchtime. Well, lunchtime is a second benefit time. So yeah, there’s there’s some lunch. Mom made lunch, and lunch is available, but Mom also made some other stuff. There’s some pudding, there’s some chocolate milk, there’s some other stuff available. There’s some fruits, there’s some raisins and some grapes and a banana and some oranges, and all of these things, all these benefits, are in Mom’s control, and now Mom in the morning work time, morning school time, she assigned the kids chores, she gave the kids tasks to do, she told the kids different things that she wanted from them, and those kids made choices during those times.
Mommy said to stay in your seats during study time, and Tommy was up running around the house. He chose not to listen. He didn’t listen to Mommy. He did whatever he wanted. So Mommy now gets to do whatever she wants. So since Tommy decided that he doesn’t need to listen to Mommy, Mommy is perfectly just in saying that she doesn’t need to give what she has to Tommy, and so she can choose to withhold from him whatever she wants, because it’s hers. It’s her benefit to share, and he has to learn that society is about giving and taking benefits, and if he doesn’t give benefits, then he has no claim or right to take benefits. And so at lunchtime, Mommy can reward the good kids with lots of benefits, and she can deny benefits to the kids who didn’t do what they were supposed to do, and the kids will learn that Mommy’s words are the means by which Mommy’s benefits are obtained.
And all of a sudden, Mommy’s words are going to be much louder in the house when the kids learn that if you ignore those words, you lose Mommy’s benefits, and Mommy has to make sure she’s preparing some desirable benefits. And the kids will learn to listen carefully when they start to lose benefits. Now, to the degree to which they ignore their mother’s voice, they can be denied benefits, and they’ll learn that. Remember, the goal is not to punish the kids. The goal is to have them learn to be good-mannered. That’s the goal. And so the ideal is kids listening, kids being respectful, kids showing honor to their mother and their mother rewarding them with benefits. Isn’t that a beautiful life?
That’s a beautiful life, but it requires justice. So again, lunchtime would be over, and usually after lunch, my wife might schedule a few minutes for the kids to have some playtime, or she might take them out for a walk or something like that. That’s another benefit, and she has control of who receives that benefit and who doesn’t, based on how they behave. And then the afternoon period comes, a couple of hours after lunch, back to school, tasks assigned to the kids. Kids taught the rules of how they’re going to behave. Kids given chores to do. Five o’clock, 5:30, getting closer to dinnertime, Mommy takes a look around and sees what was done.
She goes and looks at what the kids were supposed to do, she says, “Daniel, you didn’t do what I told you. Isaiah, you did a good job. Joshua, you did a good job.” And now Daniel knows that at dinnertime, because he chose to not do what he was told to do, he didn’t put his benefits on the table, he’s not going to have any reason to come to the dinner table expecting benefits, and he learns just how simple and reasonable that whole system is. “I didn’t put my benefits on the table; why would I expect to have benefits given to me?” It’s just—it’s a general principle of good manners. It’s just good, polite society, giving and taking and sharing of benefits. It’s justice being taught to the children in a very simple way, and that can just continue through the day.
Dinnertime is a time of benefits; after dinner, there may be more benefits. There may be another work time in the evening, followed by another time of benefits, maybe some free time. We always used to give our kids an hour or so of leisure time before their bedtime, where they would just have some free time. They could watch a movie, they could read a book, they could play whatever they wanted to play, but that had to be earned. That was a benefit that was given as a reward because if they didn’t do what they were told to do, when leisure time came, they were kept at the table or at their desk to finish the work that they didn’t do, and they lost the opportunity to have that benefit.
So that relationship with the children is what mothers, I think, often have a very difficult time developing and maintaining, because mothers get this attitude that it’s just their job to get everything done. They have this Martha spirit that she’s just busy and troubled with many things. She’s got, she’s got—I use the phrase “folding towels” with my wife disparagingly to kind of say, “You’re just folding towels.” There are these important things to deal with, and you’re folding towels, and folding towels is like a code word for giving attention to things that really aren’t that important while other things aren’t being paid attention to, like the fact that Isaiah is swinging from the ceiling fan.
And so you can just see how mothers, with all of the household chores and the tasks and the concerns that they have, they can get lost in that chicken work. They can get lost folding towels. They can get lost in all of these different things. And as they’re lost in those things, they’re not paying attention to the fact that their children are not being taught good manners, which is the real reason why they’re at home with the children, educating the children. It’s not so the house can stay clean. It’s not so the towels can get folded. It’s so the kids can be taught. Well, that’s the real first thing, that’s the one thing necessary. That’s the real primary goal of life as a stay-at-home, homeschooling mother is to teach the children good manners, first by modeling those good manners, and second, by teaching and enforcing those good manners.
And notice, this isn’t some loud, ugly, miserable activity. This isn’t a woman screaming through the house, running around frazzled and exhausted all over the place. That’s the opposite. We have a code word for that too, but I can’t share it because it’s personal. But it’s not this big mouth yelling, shouting woman in the house, because that’s not beautiful; that’s not a discreet, chaste homemaker that St. Paul talks about. That’s a, that’s a monster running through the room screaming. When a woman learns to prepare benefits for others, and in this context, we’re talking about her children, when a woman learns to prepare good things, and she teaches and enforces good manners, gaining respect, gaining honor, having her voice listened to becomes very, very easy.
It can be done very quietly, like Theodore Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” That’s the idea here that can be applied to the work of a mother. Her benefits are her stick. She doesn’t need to run around chasing kids, throwing sandals at kids, screaming through the house. She doesn’t need to do that. She has a very big, very influential stick that she carries around, and it’s just the benefits that she offers, the benefits that she offers.
“Mom,” I used to tell my wife, “you’re in charge of all of their food. You have all of these delicious things to offer them. You can bring them to the park. You can do all these nice things with them. You can buy them things. Buy them treats, buy them toys. Take them out in the backyard to play. You can take them for walks through the woods.” And my wife does all these things with the kids. She has so many benefits that she can give these kids—such an abundance of riches that she can make available to these kids. And it also includes things like money, you know, money, rewards for doing things, allowances, all these kinds of things.
Mothers have so many benefits that they can offer to their children, and the more generous, the better, as long as they teach and enforce good manners, as long as they teach and enforce good manners, and you can see how beautiful a life that can be—how meaningful, how helpful and good for the children to know that you can have and enjoy the happiest, most delicious and beautiful things. But you must be respectful. You must do your part. You must contribute your benefits. You must give honor to whom honor is due. You must be just, you must be polite, you must be respectful, and if you are, you can enjoy all of these rich benefits.
So women have a way. I didn’t plan to talk about this, but women have a way of speaking softly and carrying a big stick. And so when we talk about sparing the rod and spoiling the children, we don’t have to think about physically spanking kids. As I said, the big stick that the mothers have is the ability to withhold benefits. The problem that mothers get into is they think that by giving and giving and giving their kids are going to love them so much, because they give them so much and they’re so nice and lovey and cuddly, and they give their little babies everything. It doesn’t work. That doesn’t work; that is not just. It doesn’t teach good manners. It doesn’t teach gratitude. It doesn’t teach children to honor their mother and father.
Mothers can give their kids all the benefits they want. They can spend their whole days just thinking of new benefits to give their children, but they have to teach and enforce justice and good manners, and if they do so, they can enjoy a beautiful life with their children.
Now, I’ve talked about this before, because I did a talk once about how to make kids work, and I talked about it from the perspective of a father, about how I raise 10 children, and they all work. They’re all hard workers. They’re all active, go-getters, because they learned from a young age that if you want something, you just have to work. And if you come to Dad and say, “Hey, Dad, I need $10. Is there anything I can do to earn $10?” Yeah, of course there is. There’s a million things I could use help with. And I explained in that talk that it’s very easy to raise kids who work.
Many parents don’t raise kids who will work, because they raise kids to work for no reward, and their kids grow up associating work with no reward, and the parents actually train the kids to hate work, whereas it’s very easy to teach kids to love work. Just reward them for work. If they ask for something, say, “Sure, sure. We can buy that for you if you do this.” One time, for example, one of my older sons was an older teenager, and he asked if we could get a PlayStation in the house. Well, I had a field that needed to be cleared with the tractor, and so I made him a deal. “You go clear that field Saturday afternoon, and I’ll buy you that PlayStation.” That was a rich reward for him, something that he wanted. And he’s responsible, he’s a physically active, hard-working kid. He just, he wanted a way to enjoy some spare time, and I thought it was a good reward for a very hard job that needed to be done.
So the rewards can be great, but the difference, the difference that—the switch that’s flipped, is that when my kids think of getting something, they think of making a deal. They think of making a trade. And so they’ll come to me. My daughter, Anna, she’s nine years old. She’ll come and say, “Daddy, can I clean your office for $10?” She won’t, she won’t come and ask me for $10. She’ll come and ask me if she can clean my office and earn $10. And of course, I say yes, and then she learns that, well, if I do this, I can earn $100, and if I do this, I can earn $1,000. If I do this, I can earn $10,000, and you just see there’s a natural motivation to work. And I’m talking about good, honest work.
It’s very easy to raise kids to love work, and for mothers, likewise, it’s very easy to raise kids to be respectful, to have good manners, by simply teaching them that the more respectful they are, the more grateful they are, the more well-mannered they are, the more generous and polite they are, the more benefits they’ll receive. And if they learn that ignoring Mommy’s voice costs you all of your benefits, they’ll be like sheep who hear their Shepherd’s Voice.
Why do sheep hear their Shepherd’s Voice? Because the Shepherd has food, and they know the voice of the one who has the food, and they can hear him through a crowd. The sheep know the shepherd’s voice because, not because of the shepherd’s voice, but because that voice is the voice of food, and it’s the same with children. They will learn to listen to their mother’s voice when that voice is the voice of benefits. But mothers need to teach these good manners. They need to teach the principle of justice, and they need to be very careful that they enforce good manners by controlling the benefits that they offer. They could be as generous as they want to, but it must be just. You cannot be generous if you are not just.
So anyway, I know that that’s helpful because I’ve seen it work in my own family. I know that that’s helpful, because my wife and I have talked about this for 25 years, constantly, and I know it’s the central issue that many mothers struggle with, and it’s the cause of bad behavior among many children. And I know that it’s quite easy to fix. Mothers simply have to learn, and this is the hard part: mothers have to learn to respect themselves and control their benefits.
I hope that’s helpful. God bless you.
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
