Choosing the Parents of Our Children

All of us make choices every day — choices as to what we do with every hour and every opportunity. And we are constantly faced with contrasts: We turn down or yield to temptations. We keep or we compromise principles. We accept responsibility or we run away from it. We speak kindly or we speak critically. We are pleasant to approach or unpleasant to approach. In a thousand ways, a thousand daily decisions help more and more to make us what we are — what kind of people we are, what kind of parents we are. And in this sense we choose the parents of our children. Children do not always become the reflection of their parents, nor follow in their footsteps. But in part, they are either a reflection of them, or a reaction to them — and every child needs someone to follow, someone to pattern after, someone to set standards that can well be followed and reflected, someone in whose footsteps he could well wish to walk. Every child has a right to expect his parents to be encouraging; to have high qualities of character; and to teach and to show his children that life was meant to be lived within law, was meant to be lived according to commandments. Upon us as parents is the obligation to remember that by our choices, by our conduct, our example, our attitudes, and utterances, we are choosing the parents of our children: And constantly we should shape ourselves so that we should be pleased to find in our children some reflection of ourselves.