How Parents Can Teach Patriotism in the Home

Citizenship may be more than a matter of birth or formal naturalization. For unless we truly promote the common welfare of our country, we are aliens in the oldest sense—estranged from our fellows. Citizenship is a declaration of dependence upon one another, a recognition that only in unity do we enjoy strength and security. Such security is both moral and physical. The natural expression of that security—that identification—is patriotism.

As with many other attitudes, patriotism is easy to feign. Its usual expressions, such as saluting the flag or acknowledging the civil rights of others, can be little more than gestures. Yet, at their best, the outward manifestations of patriotic feeling can be deeply satisfying and binding symbols. The heart of patriotism, however, lies in attitudes rooted in family relationships. For the family unit, in microcosm, undergoes most of the stresses that test the larger societies comprising a nation. The qualities distinguishing patriotism are all of the “homely” variety: respect, integrity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, consideration, fairness, appreciation, and devotion. No exhortation to respect the country’s flag can mean much to youngsters whose casual, permissive upbringing has left them with little sense of respect for anything. And the child who equates freedom with indulgence may never understand the consideration for others that is fundamental to a workable democracy.

Formal study of the Constitution of the United States often begins in grade school, but the guarantees of personal freedom detailed in the first few amendments should come as no surprise to young people who have seen the Bill of Rights demonstrated and respected in their own homes. In fact, families can spend several thoroughly enjoyable and informative family home evenings relating the Bill of Rights to family responsibilities and relationships. If not all of these basic amendments directly apply to the home, a surprisingly large number of them are precisely meaningful in a family context. For instance, Article IV talks about the right of privacy and personal possession, a right American citizens should be able to count on. Using this expectation as a starting place, parents might well involve their children in a frank discussion about the responsibilities and privileges of having one’s own room—or even one’s own stereo system. As we develop pride in being accountable for personal possessions, we become able to appreciate the property rights of others and, finally, to accept appropriate responsibility for maintaining the parks, roads, and national preserves we hold jointly with other citizens. One sure sign that our families are learning patriotic lessons is their sensitivity to litter in the areas forming part of the public domain.

During recent years, most of us have been made increasingly aware of minority groups’ plight. Once again, however, we often need look no further than our own families to find instructive parallels that test our commitment to the unselfishness that is a hallmark of patriotism. Can we honestly say that the youngest child in our home is neither bullied nor shamed by older brothers and sisters? One can easily move from insisting that a small brother not tag along because he is “too little”—and would therefore need special care—to discriminating against those apparently disadvantaged by race, sex, or age who need extraordinary consideration if they are to compete successfully. When we are able to make each family member feel equally loved and equally important—and we do this by acknowledging the smallest contribution and honoring the greatest need—we all develop a concept of loyalty and concern that will transfer easily from home to country. If, in the family, we have learned to be tolerant of difference and generous in judgment, we more easily learn to work with others outside the family circle in democratic goodwill. Research in child development suggests that children usually learn cooperation and concern for others before beginning the first grade. If these abilities are not learned in the home, they will be hard to find in the schoolyard, on the campus, or on the job.

In attempting to teach patriotism, we may need to take our cue from an approach to the family exaltation program that usually proves to be helpful. The techniques of genealogical research have limited appeal to many youngsters until they become identified with the people about whom they are attempting to gather information. If one starts at the outer limits of what is available—trying to take the next step that no one considering a particular line has been able to take—progress may be so slow that only the most determined will develop a continuing interest in family research. On the other hand, if we try to involve our children in genealogical activity by telling them about our own childhood, reading to them out of current personal histories, or demonstrating how to keep a journal that is more than a diary of trivial events, they usually become aware of their need for better research techniques—and committed to learn them—without having to decide whether or not they are “interested.”

Similarly, children may struggle to understand the suffering of General Washington and his men at Valley Forge or to appreciate what such suffering means to the privileges we now enjoy, but having Grandpa describe developing a homestead on marginal land in Idaho may be the vivid spark that illuminates and makes graphic the costs an earlier generation paid for our present opportunities. We may need to work back to the times and concerns of the Founding Fathers by meeting similar concerns in our own ancestors. History gets its significance from what it means now and from people we know. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, may become more than a name and a slightly forbidding portrait if we feel linked by a passion for freedom he shared with our own forebears. Children should understand, in other words, that Revolutionary heroes had no greater commitment to freedom than their own grandparents who immigrated to the United States to enjoy the blessings of religious liberty. Each generation must purchase freedom anew, and few days pass without exacting some payment for the rights we enjoy and would guarantee to others.

In one sense, patriotism may be as difficult to describe or isolate as the bloom on the rose. But when parents have nurtured their own understanding by diligent study, they can present the facts of our social and economic development with such insight that the whole may become more than the sum of its parts. One cannot read the letters of John and Abigail Adams, for instance, without catching a sense of their own devotion to democratic principles, a devotion apparent in their most casual and prosaic exchanges. These letters do not preach; they simply share a belief so profound that it colors everything. Here are parents who are not self-consciously patriotic but so naturally and fundamentally pledged to democratic principles that those principles infuse everything they write. The Adamses’ approach should be a persuasive model for modern parents.

Finally, since our profoundest identification is theological, our feeling for country and Constitution must be based upon an understanding of the special role the United States played as the place in which the gospel could be restored. If this country is a land “choice above all other lands” that the Lord has “preserved for a righteous people” (Ether 2:7), then we teach patriotism in its ultimate sense when we imbue our children with theological truths. Every dinner-table conversation that reinforces our commitment to a gospel principle makes all who participate in it better citizens. We learn to love our country as we learn to love righteousness. A child who has a testimony of Jesus Christ is already a patriot.

During this bicentennial year, collecting the scriptures that identify America as a land of promise would be an instructive family activity. Such a collective effort will surely create a feeling of individual responsibility to help make the scriptural promises come true, for many of those promises are predicated upon the personal righteousness of the land’s inhabitants. We arm our children against those who would demean patriotic sentiments—or even constitutional government itself—by demonstrating our own identification with those political, economic, and especially religious principles upon which this nation is founded.