understand that they are at once to be obeyed.

_A second Objection_.

Another large class of mothers are deterred from making any efficient
effort to establish their authority over their children for fear of thereby
alienating their affections. "I wish my child to love me," says a mother of
this class. "That is the supreme and never-ceasing wish of my heart; and if
I am continually thwarting and constraining her by my authority, she will
soon learn to consider me an obstacle to her happiness, and I shall become
an object of her aversion and dislike."

There is some truth, no doubt, in this statement thus expressed, but it is
not applicable to the case, for the reason that there is no need whatever
for a mother's "continually thwarting and constraining" her children in her
efforts to establish her authority over them. The love which they will
feel for her will depend in a great measure upon the degree in which
she sympathizes and takes part with them in their occupations, their
enjoyments, their disappointments, and their sorrows, and in which she
indulges their child-like desires. The love, however, awakened by these
means will be not weakened nor endangered, but immensely strengthened and
confirmed, by the exercise on her part of a just and equable, but firm
and absolute, authority. This must always be true so long as a feeling of
respect for the object of affection tends to strengthen, and not to weaken,
the sentiment of love. The mother who does not govern her children is
bringing them up not to love her, but to despise her.

_Effect of Authority._

If, besides being their playmate, their companion, and friend, indulgent