The Formative Function of Mother and Father According to Personalistic-Christian Pedagogia

Abstract

The paper discusses the problem of that subject of formation which is educator, and still mote concrete the basic educator, who is mother and father. While regarding the formative role of parents, we turn to the so-called functional analysis. In it we want to point to the formative functions mother and father play (or should play) in relation to their child - pupil. We put this analysis within a broader context of the so-called formative situation as well as general formative functions and tasks emphasized from the point of view of personalistic-Christian pedagogia.

Having made a phenomenological analysis of the fact to be a parent, that is to be a mother, to be a father, the paper tends to show the formative rights and duties of parents, their functions and the place of mother and father in the context of the basic groups of educators, occurring in the process of formation. The paper converges around the statement that family, and parents, are the first educators who emerge naturally, while other educators participate in this process. They respond to the formative needs or are the effect of planned actions (they come intentionally). Essentially, the paper clearly pinpoints that the basic groups of educators: family, educators supporting the so-called social institutions, may realize their tasks and roles in their proper way, in so far as they supplement the role and functions of parents. The paper points at the formative mission and tasks of the Church itself.

Obviously, the formative tasks of father and mother are viewed differently in various contemporary conceptions of formation. The paper draws out the formative tasks of mother and father according to Christian personalism, particularly that close to the thought of the Catholic Church, a thought which is contained in the official pronouncements of the Church and may constitute the essential light for the contemporary reading out and activating the tasks of family and Christian parents who alone in their family create the so-called Home Church as the way of the Church.