--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Brimhall, George H. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 8 number: 4 published: 1905-02 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'George H. Brimhall, "Problems for Parents," *Improvement Era* 8, no. 4 (February 1905): 294–295.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0804unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0804unse start_page: 294 end_page: 295 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1905-02) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0804unse publication_year: 1905 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1905, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Problems for Parents PROBLEMS FOR PARENTS. BY DR. GEORGE H. BRIMHALL, PRESIDENT OF THE BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY. I present the following queries to the readers of the Era, with the hope that they may cause some of our young parents ta think. No question is of greater importance than family government. Parents who have growing children should make it a matter of study as well as prayer, to discover the secret of truetraining in the family. Upon it depends the stability, the virtue,. PROBLEMS FOR PARENTS. * 295the value, the character of the future citizens of the Church and state. Why not write answers to these questions, and have the best submitted for publication? 1. What are the three great essential conditions of parenthood? 2. What may consistently be adversely said of any process of nature, or plan of life, that will plant within beings an unquenchable desire or yearning for perpetual or eternal parenthood; i. e., legalized progenitorship or ownership of offspring, and yet make no provisions whereby that desire or yearning can be gratified? 3. By what means alone can our children become eternal riches to us? 4. What three undesirable conditions of life is a child ruinously fitted for by an out-door, street night-school? 5. As a governing power, why is one do more effective than any number of don'ts. 6. If the grumble? get into a family, what must immediately get out? 7. Which is wise, and why? To have the very best possible home buildings while the children are growing up, even though no surplus be laid by, or to wait and build the nice house after the boys become "big" and the girls grow to womanhood? 8. Why does over-strictness in trivial things lessen the parental governing power in matters of importance? 9. Why should neither father nor mother practice hiding the child's faults from each other? 10. What effect must it have on a child for one of its parents to parade the faults of the other before the child? (or anywhere else, for that matter.) 11. Wherein is family prayer indispensable as a governing power for the entire household? 12. Why can a blasphemous parent never consistently hope for the respect of his offspring? Provo, Utah,