time to time. Sometimes
conflict is well, not conflict in the sense of ceaseless clashing but
as frank and undisguised acceptance of the fact of irreconcilably
discrepant standards. Better some wars than some peace! There are
times when parents and children should conflict with one another, when
approval is invited or tolerance expected of the intolerable and
abhorrent, whether in the case of an unworthy daughter or a viciously
dissolute son. I make the proviso that such conflict, decisive and
final, can be as far as parents are concerned without the abandonment
of love for the erring daughter or wayward son.

Severer, if anything, the conflict becomes when it is children who are
bidden to endure and embrace what they conceive to be the lower
standards of parents. The clashing may not be less serious because
inward and voiceless rather than outward and vocal. If parents feel
free to reprove children, it behooves them to have in mind that
children are and of right ought to be free to disapprove of parents,
though the conventions seem to forbid children to utter such
disapproval. Outward assent may cover up the most violent disapproval,
and parenthood should hardly be offered up in mitigation or
extenuation any more than the status of orphanhood should shield the
parricide or matricide. And it cannot be made too clear, children have
the right to reject for themselves the lower standards of parents.

Before me has come from time to time the question whether it is the
business of a daughter to yield obedience to a mother who would inflict
low and degrading standards upon her child. Or the question is put thus:
what would you say to a son, who refuses to enter into and have part in
the business of his father which he believes to be unethical, though the
father and the rest of the world view it as wholly normal and
legitimate? I may not find it in me to urge a child not to obey a
parent, neither would I bid a son or daughter waive the scruples of
conscience in order to please a parent. Times and occasions there are, I
believe, when a child is justified in saying to parents in the terms of
finest gentleness and courtesy--the filial _fortiter in re_ must above
all else be _suaviter in modo_--it is not you whom I disobey, because I
must obey a law higher than that which parents can impose upon me. I
must obey the highest moral law of my own being.

But this decision is always a grave one and must be arrived at in the
spirit