Only Mom

“… the springs of an empire’s prosperity lie in the domestic constitution, and in well-trained families. … Even one such family is a contribution to the majestic flow of a nation’s greatness.  Can such families exist without a woman’s care, and oversight, and wisdom?  Has it not grown into a proverb, that home has ever been the nursery of great men, and their mothers their instructresses?  It may be said as a general principle, that woman is not only the mother of the body, but of the character of her children.  To her is first entrusted the instruction of the mind, the cultivation of the heart, the formation of the life.  Thought, feeling, will, imagination, virtue, religion, or the contrary moral tendencies, all germinate under her fostering influence. ‘The greatest power in the moral world is that which a mother exercises over her young child.’ The decisive moment in education is the starting point.  The dominant direction which is to determine the whole course of life, lies concealed in the first years of infancy; and those belong to the mother.

-John Angell James