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The Home: The Nation Builder

Tom Barnard 

n January 1996 a book was published with the captivating title, It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (Simon & Schuster). Author of the book was then-First-Lady of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 1997 Mrs. Clinton received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for her audio recording of the best-selling book. 

Some challenges to the validity of the book’s conclusions soon followed. Former Senator Robert Dole, during a speech to the Republican National Convention in August, 1996, said, “…with all due respect, I am here to tell you, it does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a family to raise a child.”  

Senator Dole was not the only person in the last century with strong opinions about the importance of the home in developing character in America’s youth. Henry van Dyke (1852-1933) was widely respected as an author, educator, and minister. For twenty-four years Van Dyke was professor of English literature at Princeton. His essay, “The Home as a Nation Builder,” was written prior to 1920. It was later published in a book entitled One Hundred Declamations, (Fort Worth, Texas, The Babcock Co., 1932, p. 102.)  

Here are two powerful paragraphs from Van Dyke’s essay (parenthetical edits are mine): 

Show me a home where the tone of life is selfish, disorderly, or trivial; where success is worshipped and righteousness ignored; where there are two consciences, one for private and one for public use; where boys are permitted to believe that religion has nothing to do with citizenship and that their object must be to get as much as possible from the state and to do as little as possible for it; where the girls are (permitted) to think that because they have no votes (women’s suffrage was granted to women in the USA in 1920) they have therefore no duties to the commonwealth, and that the crowning glory of an American woman’s life is to marry a foreigner with a title. Show me such a home and I will show you a breeding-place of enemies of the republic. 

To the hands of the women, the ordinance of nature has committed the trust of training of men (and women) for their country’s service. A great general like Napoleon may be produced in a military school. A great diplomat like Metternich may be developed in a court. A great philosopher like Hegel may be evolved in a university. But a great man like Washington can come only from a pure and noble home. The greatness, indeed, parental love cannot bestow; but (integrity) is often a mother’s gift. Teach your sons (and daughters) to respect themselves without asserting themselves. Teach them to think sound and wholesome thoughts, free from prejudice and passion. Teach them to speak the truth, even about their own party, and to pay their debts in the same money in which they were contracted, and to prefer poverty to dishonor. Teach them to worship God by doing some useful work, to live honestly and cheerfully in such a station as they are fit to fill, and to love their country with an unselfish and an uplifting love. Then they may not all be Washington's, but they will be such men (and women) as will choose a Washington to be their ruler and leader. And in the conflict between corporate capital and organized labor, if come it must, they will stand fast as soldiers, not of labor nor of capital but of that which is infinitely above them both—the commonwealth of law and freedom. 

It is fitting that this week’s “Tuesday Morning” immediately follows Sunday’s recognition of “Mothers’ Day” in the United States. The concerns raised by Van Dyke are as relevant today as they were when he wrote the words 90 years ago. The home is still the “nation builder,” and the factors that affect the development of character are still three-fold: domestic, political, and religious—the home, the state, and the church.