, as their's. This is that which puts the authority
into the parents hands to govern the minority of their children. God
hath made it their business to employ this care on their offspring, and
hath placed in them suitable inclinations of tenderness and concern to
temper this power, to apply it, as his wisdom designed it, to the
children's good, as long as they should need to be under it.

Sect. 64. But what reason can hence advance this care of the parents due
to their off-spring into an absolute arbitrary dominion of the father,
whose power reaches no farther, than by such a discipline, as he finds
most effectual, to give such strength and health to their bodies, such
vigour and rectitude to their minds, as may best fit his children to be
most useful to themselves and others; and, if it be necessary to his
condition, to make them work, when they are able, for their own
subsistence. But in this power the mother too has her share with the
father.

Sect. 65. Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any
peculiar right of nature, but only as he is guardian of his children,
that when he quits his care of them, he loses his power over them, which
goes along with their nourishment and education, to which it is
inseparably annexed; and it belongs as much to the foster-father of an
exposed child, as to the natural father of another. So little power does
the bare act of begetting give a man over his issue; if all his care
ends there, and this be all the title he hath to the name and authority
of a father. And what will become of this paternal power in that part of
the world, where one woman hath more than one husband at a time? or in
those parts of America, where, when the husband and wife part, which
happens frequently, the children are all left to the mother, follow her,
and are wholly under her care and provision? If the father die whilst
the children are young, do they not naturally every where owe the same
obedience to their mother, during their minority, as to their father
were he alive? and will any one say, that the mother hath a legislative
power over her children? that she can make standing rules, which shall
be of perpetual obligation, by which they ought to regulate all the
concerns of their property, and bound their liberty all the course of
their lives? or can she inforce the observation of them with capital
punishments? for this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which
the father hath not so much