Modernists are wiser in their generation than the fathers. The fathers believed, for instance, in a strict interpretation and application of the Fifth Commandment. The children of today believe that commandment had the situation backward and that it should have read this way, “Parents, obey your children”! And the ridiculous fact is that this is about what they are doing.
Those who are intent to discover the cause of much of the laxity in the morals of this generation need to search no further for the trouble. It lies in the elimination of proper home discipline. Children who grow up in disrespect of their parents, who have no regard for either their counsel or their commands, are the citizens of the future who will have neither respect for the laws of God or country. They are already lawless and their lawlessness will only become more emphatic when they step out later into the realm of citizenship.
It is not difficult to observe such a tendency in these days. What father or mother is there in Charlotte who is respected and obeyed by their children as they themselves respected and obeyed their fathers and mothers. There are none, we dare say. On the other hand, children are not only being allowed to run along in the ways of disobedience to parents, but they are actually unchallenged when they want to assert their own independence and exercise their own judgment. And many of them are mere brats of children, little tots who are literally shaping their own courses of action and giving their own slant to their future.
The lead editorial from The Charlotte News, Sunday morning, April 17, 1921
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