In a family, parents are responsible for the welfare of the children and offer the children an embracing, unconditional love that overlooks and compensates for their weaknesses. Through their example, they teach their children the basic values and attitudes which they will carry throughout life. The children, in turn, respect their parents as the source of their very being, as their teachers, and as the ones who have labored and sacrificed for their sakes. When they are grown, they should be responsible to care for their parents in their old age. These relative responsibilities should not be undertaken as a matter of duty, but rather emerge from the spontaneous promptings of parental love and the children's gratitude and respect. This is the vertical axis defining relations of love and respect between people of unequal status and different responsibilities.

1. He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
2. Train ups a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
3. You can only coil a fish when it is fresh.
4. And remember when Luqman said to his son by way of instruction, "O my dear son! Establish worship and enjoin kindness and forbid iniquity, and persevere, whatever may befall you. Lo! That is the steadfast heart of things."

In other words, you must train a child from the earliest state of immaturity when his character is able to adjust readily to different conditions.