A Father's Duty: Discipline

Keeping order so it keeps you

It is a father’s duty to enforce discipline for the benefit of his children. Boys growing up without a biological father in the home suffer especially from a lack of boundaries. ‘For what son is there whom the father does not correct?’ St Paul writes (Hebrews 12.7). And he adds that we must ‘Persevere, therefore, under discipline. God dealeth with you as with his sons.’

So how does God deal with his sons? ‘Whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth, and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth’ (Heb. xii. 6). As St. Paul explains,

‘All chastisement for the present indeed seemeth not to bring with it joy, but sorrow: but afterwards it will yield to them that are exercised by it the most peaceful fruit of justice.’

God punishes us, then, because He loves us and wants to make us perfect. Although it means suffering in the moment, punishment leads to our happiness in the end. Thus God the Father — ‘of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named’ (Ephesians 3:15) — is the model for human fathers.

So the weak father who fails to keep his children walking on the road of righteousness fails them. If mild words don’t work and the father is too soft to wield the rod, he abandons his child to disorder, leading to far worse suffering in the end than what the father should in justice have inflicted.

That’s why God punished the high-priest Heli for not correcting and punishing his two sons. Priests like Heli himself, they performed their duty negligently:

‘In that day,” said the Lord, ‘I will raise up against Heli all the things I have spoken concerning his house, for I have foretold unto him that I will judge his house forever, for inquity, because he knew that his sons did wickedly, and did not chastise them’ (I. Kings, iii. 12, 13).

When the Philistines attacked, God permitted the defeat of Israel and the death of Heli’s sons. When a messenger told Heli (then ninety-eight years old) about this, ‘he fell from his stool backwards by the door, and broke his neck, and died’ (verse 18). Heli failed his sons.

The purpose of punishment is to enforce obedience out of love: ‘what son is there whom the father does not correct?’ When this can be achieved by kind but stern words, corporal punishment is an abuse of authority. Especially with a timid child, the father who uses it commits a greater fault than the one he is trying to correct. Most children are ignorant and thoughtless rather than malicious. Words are enough.

But even with stubborn children deliberately challenging authority, where stronger punishment is necessary it mustn’t be accompanied by anger or abuse. The father’s inability to control his passions — the mark of a man — will make his child contemptuous, worsening the problem of disrespect.

Thus St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians: ‘And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord’ (Eph. vi. 4).

Like God, the just father punishes with mercy. ‘Fathers, provoke not…your children to indignation, lest they be discouraged’ (Coloss. iii. 21).

Some children might need a smack sometimes. And sometimes punishment needs to be inflicted immediately. But corporal punishment is rarely warranted. A lazy child can be given extra work; a greedy child can be made to wait longer for dinner and not given pudding; an ungrateful child can be made to wear old clothes for a while. And so on.

Most fathers fail first by not being consistent and firm with the small things. If you don’t stamp out the sparks, you end up with a blaze. They then fail again by being too harsh to compensate. And this just pours fuel on the fire.

It’s much harder to inflict the right punishment in the right way at the right time than it is to not punish at all. But it’s the father’s duty. Raising a child takes around 20 years, and since ‘man is the head of the woman’ (I. Cor. xi. 3) it’s the father’s responsibility to oversee it.

After all, he is equally the cause of the child’s existence, and although the mother’s nurturing and tenderness predominate in the younger years, the father’s role becomes increasingly important as the child ages. The father and mother form a complete whole - ‘two in one flesh’ — for the benefit of the family.

A lazy father who doesn’t teach his children about God, religion or virtue — who is rarely seen praying, rarely seen going to church, confession and communion — who is impatient, angry and hateful towards his family and neighbours — who is gluttonous, drunk and deceitful — is not only failing but setting his children up for failure.

It doesn’t matter how much he earns. In fact, this kind of father often exhausts himself in the pursuit of money, rationalising it as providing for his family, but really he is neglecting his more important duty to provide them with an education and protect them from sin.

Moderation in business in essential: work is merely a means to an end.

‘God,’ says St. Augustine, ‘is a God of order; he, therefore, who lives according to order lives according to God.’ And St. Bernard warns us ‘in the Lord, be diligent in preserving order that order may preserve you.’ Fathers must do their duty not just for their children’s eternal welfare but also their own.

Daily habits matter because every day brings you and your family nearer to Heaven or hell. Here are some small things to take control of that will give big results:

• Regular times for waking and sleeping

• Prayer morning and evening

• Regular times for meals

• Regular times for study and relaxation

• Grace before and after

• Mass, Holy Communion, Confession

• Learn to enjoy your leisure time with your family