Parent's Pledge to Children
In every home where this pledge is made and kept, children will have a greater opportunity to grow into healthy, intelligent and useful members of society:
• From your earliest infancy we will give you our love, so that you may grow with trust in yourself and in others.
• We will recognize your worth as a person and we will help you to strengthen your sense of belonging.
• We will respect your right to be yourself and at the same time help you to understand the rights of others, so that you may experience cooperative living.
• We will help you to develop initiative and imagination, so that you may have the opportunity freely to create.
• We will encourage your curiosity and your pride in workmanship, so that you may have the satisfaction that comes from achievement.
• We will provide the conditions for wholesome play that will add to your learning, to your social experience, and to your happiness.
• We illustrate by precept and example the value of integrity and the importance of moral courage.
• We will encourage you always to seek the truth.
• We will provide you with all opportunities possible to develop your own spirituality.
• We will open the way for you to enjoy the arts and to use them for deepening your understanding of life.
• We will work to rid ourselves of prejudice and discrimination, so that together we may achieve a truly democratic society.
• We will work to lift the standard of living and to improve our economic practices, so that you may have the material basis for a full life.
• We will provide you with rewarding educational opportunities, so that you may develop your talents and contribute to a better world.
• We will protect you against exploitation and undue hazards and help you grow in health and strength.
• We will work to conserve and improve family life, as needed, to provide foster care according to your inherent rights.
• We will intensify our search for new knowledge in order to guide you more effectively as you develop your potentialities.
• As you grow from child to youth to adult, establishing a family life of your own and accepting larger social responsibilities, we will work with you to improve conditions for all children and youth.
• Aware that these promises to you cannot be fully met in a world at war, we ask you to join us in a firm dedication to the building of a world society based on freedom, justice and mutual respect.
So you may grow in joy, in things of the Spirit and in man, and in those qualities of vision and of the soul that will sustain us all and give us hope for the future.
(From a Mid-century Conference on Children and Youth, Washington D.C., December 3-7, 1950, 6000 participants)
