children's good, as long as they should need to be under it.
Sec. 64. But what reason can hence advance this care of the parents
due to their off-spring into an absolute arbitrary dominion of the
father, whose power reaches no farther, than by such a discipline, as he
finds most effectual, to give such 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