What a
blushing shame and disgrace to the very name of Christian mother, it is for
her to throw the whole care and responsibility of the nursery upon hired
and irreligious servants. And why is this so often done? To relieve the
mother from the trouble of her children, and afford her time and
opportunity to mingle unfettered in the giddy whirl of fashionable
dissipation. In circles of opulent society it would now be considered a
drudgery and a disgrace for mothers to attend upon the duties of this
responsible department of home. But the nurse cannot be a substitute for
the mother.
"Then why resign into a stranger's hand
A task so much within your own command,
That God and Nature, and your interest too
Seem with one voice to delegate to you?"
The same may be said of boarding schools, to which many parents send their
children to rid themselves of the trouble of training them up. They are
sent there at the very age in which they mostly need the fostering care of
a parent. There they soon become alienated from home, and lose the benefit
of its influence; and there too they often contract habits and are filled
with sentiments the most degenerating and corrupt. They grow up and enter
society without any conscious relation to home, and as a consequence,
regard society as a mere heartless conventionalism. To this part of the
subject we shall, in another chapter, devote special attention.
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