Article May 10, 1969 Issue

You Are Not His Mother

FRANCES A. McCORKINDALE

Thoughtful people everywhere long to know how they can best help their children establish high goals and reputable standards of conduct. This responsibility hangs heavily on the shoulders of many conscientious parents. Most of them try hard to be good parents. Some fumble their way through child-rearing days hoping for the best, not realizing what claims to be lacking either in themselves or their children.

A recent news report included interviews with several troubled college students. Some of them said that they had been given too much love at home, others that they had been given too little. Then could we not assume that the solution to such problems does not lie in human love given or withheld by others? Might it not lie in what the individual himself knows of his true identity and parenthood?

Children and young people need to learn who they are. They need to know they have a much higher Parent than any human being—that they are the children of God and are loved as such. Parents and friends, as mature adults, have the obligation to give them this correct estimate of themselves and to trust them to prove that God is the one Father-Mother. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man."^{Science and Health, p. 256;}