What Parents Owe Their Children

One

The obligations of parents

The fourth commandment demands that children honor their father and mother. But, of course, children don’t start out being able to fulfill their obligations because they start out as helpless infants. And that means, when the parent-child relationship is first established, it’s actually the parents who have obligations toward their children.

So what, exactly, do parents owe their children?

Two

What parents owe their kids on the natural level

Just on the natural level, parents owe their kids a lot more than taking care of them physically. 

We are naturally composed of body and soul and the souls of children demand care as much as their bodies do.

So how should parents help form their kids’ souls?

Listen to what the Catechism has to say: 

“Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children (in the virtues). They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery – the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children to subordinate the material and instinctual needs to interior and spiritual ones. Parents have a grave responsibility to give a good example to their children… Parents should teach children to avoid the compromising and degrading influences which threaten human societies” (#2223 – 2224).

So, what kids need is education in being good, in being charitable, forgiving, selfless, serving, and in being able to say “no” to their physical urges or social pressures in order to say “yes” to what is truly good. 

And they need to learn all that from parents, from the dynamics of the home, and from your good example. 

And that’s just at the natural level! 

Three

What parents owe their kids on the supernatural level

What about faith? What about the relationship with the Lord?

This too is something that parents owe their kids. It’s something they have to take responsibility for passing on. 

Listen again to the Catechism: 

“Education in the faith by parents should begin in the child’s earliest years. This already happens when family members help one another to grow in faith by the witness of a Christian life in keeping with the Gospel… Parents have the mission of teaching their children to pray and to discover their vocation as children of God…” (#2226). 

Parents are the primary educators of their kids. That means the bodies, their skills, their virtues, but also their faith and growth in holiness.

So are you giving this to your kids? Are you regularly teaching them the faith? Are you praying with them every day? Are you teaching the older ones to build a daily prayer habit? 

Because if you’re not, then you’re defrauding them of what they have the right to expect from you – and what God expects from you. 

Jesus said that it profits a man nothing if he gains the world and loses his soul. So too, you’re not doing your job as a parent if you work really hard to give your kids the world, and you forget to give them God and Heaven.

Four

Can’t outsource

So, obviously, this is a ton of work! Giving kids what they need to be virtuous, what they need to be holy, what they need to be well-educated in the faith – plus all the other stuff. 

Some parents look at this list and think, “You know what, this is more than I can handle. Maybe I can just outsource this faith formation and virtue stuff?”

But you can’t. God gave these kids to you – you can’t pay someone else to raise them in virtue or faith, anymore than you can pay your secretary to walk your daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.

Some stuff, you just have to do.

Again, this is what the Catechism says, “The right of parents to educate their children is primordial and inalienable” (#2221). 

In other words, parents are meant to be the primary formers of their children. No one can take away that right – and no parent can give away that responsibility. 

Schoolteachers and parish catechists – these folks can function as support staff, but ultimately, they exist only to supplement the more fundamental human and spiritual education you owe your kids.

I know it’s a big job, but somebody needs to do it – and whether you feel qualified or not, that somebody is you. 

Five

Apologizing

And by the way, no one feels qualified to provide all this to their children. To give an example of selflessness and patience? To answer their faith questions? To teach them how to pray? To show them the path to sanctity?  

How are we not going to fail at this?

Well, of course we’re going to fail at this. And our kids are going to see us fail. And then comes one of the most important things parents owe their kids: apologizing. 

One final quote from the Catechism: “By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them” (#2223). 

One of the most important – almost the most important thing – you can teach your kids is how to repent. Is how to say I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better.

The Lord has promised that those who repent will be forgiven – they will be saved.

So when you fail, don’t get discouraged. Just see it as an opportunity to teach your kids one of the most important things they’ll ever learn from their parents. Show them how to repent, and then show them how to get back up and try again. 

And if you do that, and do it consistently, your children will be blessed.