4. What are the causes that separate parents and children?
5. How shall we define duties to business, to society, and to the family?
6. Under what circumstances is one justified in refusing time to the church for the sake of the family?
7. What are the best times and opportunities for the strengthening of the personal bonds between children and parents?
8. How shall we overcome the apparent difficulty of maintaining the confidence of children?
CHAPTER XXIV
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
Whether we can remedy the ills of family living today or not, we can determine the character of the family life of the future. The homes of tomorrow are being determined today. The children who swing their feet in schoolrooms and play in our gardens will control family living very soon. We can do little to reconstruct the old order; we can do everything to determine the new. When the mountain sides have been made bare, forest conservation cannot save the old trees, but it can prepare for new growths. Ours is the larger opportunity because we can determine the ideals of our children. Today we can determine that they shall not suffer from false conceptions, shall not bruise themselves in the blind ignorance that compelled us to find our own way. We shall see that, first, in the education of our children we can save the homes of tomorrow by training the children of today to set first things first. If family life has been neglected in America, it has been because we have submerged its real values of character and affection in a flood of things, of materialism.