strength and health to their bodies, such vigour and rectitude to 
their minds, as may best fit his children to be most useful to 
themselves and others; and, if it be necessary to his condition, 
to make them work, when they are able, for their own subsistence.  
But in this power the mother too has her share with the 
father.

     Sec. 65.  Nay, this power so little belongs to the 
father by any peculiar right of nature, but only as he is 
guardian of his children, that when he quits his care of them, he 
loses his power over them, which goes along with their 
nourishment and education, to which it is inseparably annexed; 
and it belongs as much to the foster-father of an exposed 
child, as to the natural father of another.  So little power does 
the bare act of begetting give a man over his issue; if all his 
care ends there, and this be all the title he hath to the name 
and authority of a father.  And what will become of this 
paternal power in that part of the world, where one woman hath 
more than one husband at a time? or in those parts of America, 
where, when the husband and wife part, which happens frequently, 
the children are all left to the mother, follow her, and are 
wholly under her care and provision? If the father die whilst the 
children are young, do they not naturally every where owe the 
same obedience to their mother, during their minority, as to 
their father were he alive? and will any one say, that the mother 
hath a legislative power over her children? that she can make 
standing rules, which shall be of perpetual obligation, by which 
they ought to regulate all the concerns of their property, and 
bound their liberty all the course of their lives? or can she 
inforce the observation of them with capital punishments? for 
this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which the father 
hath not so much as the shadow.  His command over his children is 
but temporary, and reaches not their life or property: it is but 
a help to the weakness and imperfection of their nonage, a 
discipline necessary to their education: and though a father 
may dispose of his own possessions as he pleases, when his 
children are out of danger of perishing for want, yet his power 
extends not to the lives or goods, which either their own 
industry, or another's bounty has made their's; nor to their 
liberty neither, when they are once arrived to the 
infranchisement of the years of discretion.  The father's 
empire then ceases, and he can from thence forwards no more 
dispose of the liberty of his son, than that of any other man: 
and it must be far from an absolute or perpetual jurisdiction, 
from which a man may withdraw himself, having license from divine 

authority to leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife. 

     Sec. 66.  But though there be a time when a child comes to 
be as free from subjection to the will and command of his 
father, as the father himself is free from subjection to the will 
of any body else, and they are each under no other restraint, but 
that which is common to them both, whether it be the law of 
nature, or municipal law of their country; yet this freedom 
exempts not a son from that honour which he ought, by the law 
of God and nature, to pay his parents.  God having made the 
parents instruments in his great design of continuing the race of 
mankind, and the occasions of life to their children; as he hath 
laid on them an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up 
their offspring; so he has laid on the children a perpetual 
obligation of honouring their parents, which containing in it 
an inward esteem and reverence to be shewn by all outward 
expressions, ties up the child from any thing that may ever 
injure or affront, disturb or endanger, the happiness or life of 
those from whom he received his; and engages him in all actions 
of defence, relief, assistance and comfort of those, by whose 
means he entered into being, and has been made capable of any 
enjoyments of life: from this obligation no state, no freedom can 
absolve children.  But this is very far from giving parents a 
power of command over their children, or an authority to make 
laws and dispose as they please of their lives or liberties.  It 
is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude and assistance; 
another to require an absolute obedience and submission.  The 
honour due to parents, a monarch in his throne owes his mother; 
and yet this lessens not his authority, nor subjects him to her 
government.

     Sec. 67.  The subjection of a minor places in the father a 
temporary government, which terminates with the minority of the 
child: and the honour due from a child, places in the parents a 
perpetual right to respect, reverence, support and compliance 
too, more or less, as the father's care, cost, and kindness in 
his education, has been more or less.  This ends not with 
minority, but holds in all parts and conditions of a man's life.  
The want of distinguishing these two powers, viz. that which 
the father hath in the right of tuition, during minority, and 
the right of honour all his life, may perhaps have caused a 
great part of the mistakes about this matter: for to speak 
properly of them, the first of these is rather the privilege of 
children, and duty of parents, than any prerogative of paternal 
power.  The nourishment and education of their children is a 
charge so incumbent on parents for their children's good, that 
nothing can absolve them from taking care of it: and though the 
power of commanding and chastising them go along with it, yet 
God hath woven into the principles of human nature such a 
tenderness for their off-spring, that there is little fear that 
parents should use their power with too much rigour; the excess 
is seldom on the severe side, the strong byass of nature drawing 
the other way.  And therefore God almighty when he would express 
his gentle dealing with the Israelites, he tells them, that