'Good looking houses do not necessarily a home make'. Without much ado, let us get down to the basic problem of parents and children, in the presence of both parties.  In the world today, the presence of unmarried mothers and fatherless children, both of which are no more secrets to the young or the old, seem to ramify the problem to a lamentable degree. The
concept of parents and children, particularly in terms of their personal relationships, is driven in many quarters to assume a mythical or legendary character. Such things  as traditionally accepted mutual love, respect and regard between parents and children do not seem to exist any more. It is constantly one of serious challenge with regard to what are deemed and termed
children's rights. More seriously, they are issues of neglect or harassment of children on the part of parents, with a threatening note of accusation.

          The creation of humans in this world apparently has now changed hands. It has now come to be a very  much down-to-earth operation. But obviously with a disastrous lack of responsibility and accountability, quite often. With IVF,  test-tube babies and surrogate mothers, it is both manageably and visibly in the hands of humans.  So far so good. Even school going age boys and girls of  today know and are often taught  as a part of their school curriculum, everything about human procreation and equally well about interference with it. The world apparently has assumed that it has perfect control over the new process of genetic manipulation. Cloning, we fear, would take the process calamitously further. It becomes
doubly serious when one is not capable of determining the honesty and sincerity and the seriousness of motivation and purpose behind such adventures.

         Asia has been more conservative, and we do seriously expect it would be left alone to continue being so, on the relationship of parents and children and their life in the home. The father and the mother in the home, who are visibly there in the presence of their children and must continue to do so, are presented as being entitled to claim, before any other elsewhere,
divinity and the right to regulate and govern the lives of those whom they have produced. Buddhist texts in Pali present this idea as  Brahmâ' ti mâtâ-pitaro which means ' the mother and father are the equals of the believed-in Creator of the world '. Without any further need for theorizing, the visibly known creators of progeny are directly before those whom they have created. Questions of legal and biological paternity are problems we generate today, with our extraordinary skills of manipulation and our ingenuity to shift our responsibilities. We create the problems within the area of domestic life and we seek legal solutions from elsewhere.
 
         In Buddhism, children are regarded as the inestimable [unassessed] assets of the humans. Puttâ vatthu  manussânam - they say. Therefore let us first discover for ourselves the distinctive role which the parents must come forward to play, both to safeguard their own honoured position as parents and to make available to the children their esteemed service in the interests of  mankind, through the production of worthy children. 1. It is the mother and the father who jointly bring forth the children into the world, whether it be through the process of normal pregnancies or through in vitro fertilization or the more complex
mechanism of today's test-tube babies. Therefore the mother and the father are jointly called the generators of  progeny or
âpâdakâ . 2. Thereafter the parents have to step into the next invariable role of rearing their children [posakâ = those who nourish and support].
 
         The mother, once pregnant, whether she is married or unmarried, would go through the normal process of bearing the child. This limited time span is the period of the generative process which the Buddhist ethics looks up on with the greatest respect for the woman as mother. The care of the would-be-mother is a matter of serious concern in Buddhist family
ethics, i.e. adequate pre-natal care bestowed on the mother which is called gabbha-parihâra [or taking care of pregnancy], well before to-day's ultrasound  assistance.

          The earliest evidence of this is already reflected in the Angulimala Sutta, [No.86] of the Majjhima Nikaya [ II.p.97ff.]. There we are told that the Buddha himself requested the newly ordained erstwhile bandit Angulimala to go and wish well and offer blessings and comfort to an expectant mother whom he had seen to be in distressing labour pains. The thera goes to her and on the strength of the good life lived by him since becoming a disciple of the Buddha, wishes comfort and well-being to her and the baby to be born : sotthi te hotu sotthi gabbhassa.

           The Mahayana tradition of Buddhism offers a similar service to expectant mothers with its concept of the Goddess of Mercy or Koyasu Kannon who takes regular care of pregnant mothers. A fair range of statues of her are seen, in countries like China and Japan, sitting pretty with a babe on her lap [ See Koyasu Kannon in Alice Getty's  The Gods of Northern Buddhism, p.96f.].

          In our next issue we shall discuss the fourfold system of child care or  Cattâri sangaha-vatthûni [Satara sangraha vastu  in Sinhala] as propounded in early Buddhist teachings.

                      May all beings be well and happy. May there be peace on earth and goodwill among men.
                                                        Sabbe sattâ  bhavantu sukhitattâ