On the Training of Parents
Abbott opens with two starkly different parenting scenarios, then builds his case: the parent who commands without understanding fails; the parent who observes, adapts, and cultivates earns trust instead of obedience. He argues that discipline works best when it teaches rather than punishes, that children develop good habits through patient guidance rather than harsh correction. The radical premise here is that parents must train themselves first, examining their own impulses before attempting to shape a child's behavior. Written in an era when the rod was still widely justified, this book advocates for something closer to respect: knowing each child as an individual, not a miniature adult to be managed. The prose is warm and practical, peppered with concrete examples that feel timeless. Whether you find its methods dated or startlingly modern will say more about your own assumptions than about Abbott's wisdom.
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“Why don't you have your children go to church? There is only one rational answer to that question. It might be put into some such form as this: "I have no special objection to churches. They are useful. So are free libraries. People who have no books at home find free libraries a great benefit; but my family have at home all the books they need. So people who are not well supplied with religion derive undoubted benefit from churches; but my family have at home all the religion they need. The community would be about as well off without any churches as it is with the churches it has. If no other charity seems more important, I am willing to contribute to a church as I might to a free library; but really I see no reason why I should go to church myself, or expect my children to go." That is a rational answer. I know of no other answer essentially different that could be called rational.””
— Ernest Hamlin Abbott
“It is one of the annoyances in the training of children that if we are to be honest with them, we must be honest with ourselves. I do not see how that can be helped.””
— Ernest Hamlin Abbott
“there is no vocation more exciting than parenthood.””
— Ernest Hamlin Abbott
“Why we expect children to be more tranquil than a parliamentary body or a ministers' meeting I do not know and cannot imagine.””
— Ernest Hamlin Abbott
“Of course it would never do for a child to live in too just a world; his awakening upon entrance into the world that we grown folks have made for ourselves would be cruelly rude. He must have ample chance to learn how to meet injustice.””
— Ernest Hamlin Abbott
“There is nothing necessarily soft or flabby about the imaginative life. There is no special reason why little children should be afflicted with continual talk about the dear little birdies or the sweet little flowers. Indeed, the natural taste of children seems to be attracted in the opposite direction. One small boy, when he inquired about a bloody Bible picture, and was put off with the explanation that it was not a pleasant story, expressed the views of many of his age when, looking up angelically, he exclaimed with ecstasy, "I like to hear about horrid things.””
— Ernest Hamlin Abbott
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Abbott, Ernest Hamlin. On the Training of Parents. Lex, lex-books.com/book/on-the-training-of-parents-63c03d6a-6f9d-45af-a1d9-43abdce0c383.Abbott, E. H. (n.d.). On the Training of Parents. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/on-the-training-of-parents-63c03d6a-6f9d-45af-a1d9-43abdce0c383Abbott, Ernest Hamlin. On the Training of Parents. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/on-the-training-of-parents-63c03d6a-6f9d-45af-a1d9-43abdce0c383.
