Dear Baha'i friends,
The Universal House of Justice has received your letter of
16 October 1980 enclosing a letter from the Spiritual Assembly of ... posing
questions which have arisen as a result of reading the book When We Grow Up by
Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, and it has instructed us to convey the following.
The House of Justice suggests that all statements in the
Holy Writings concerning specific areas of the relationship between men and
women should be considered in the light of the general principle of equality
between the sexes that has been authoritatively and repeatedly enunciated in
the Sacred Texts. In one of His Tablets 'Abdu'l-Baha asserts: "In this
divine age the bounties of God have encompassed the world of women. Equality of
men and women, except in some negligible instances, has been fully and
categorically announced. Distinctions have been utterly removed." That men
and women differ from one another in certain characteristics and functions is
an inescapable fact of nature; the important thing is that 'Abdu'l-Baha regards
such inequalities as remain between the sexes as being "negligible."
The relationship between husband and wife must be viewed in
the context of the Baha'i ideal of family life. Baha'u'llah came to bring unity
to the world, and a fundamental unity is that of the family. Therefore, one
must believe that the Faith is intended to strengthen the family, not weaken
it, and one of the keys to the strengthening of unity is loving consultation.
The atmosphere within a Baha'i family as within the community as a whole should
express "the keynote of the Cause of God" which, the beloved Guardian
has stated, "is not dictatorial authority, but humble fellowship, not arbitrary
power, but the spirit of frank and loving consultation."
A family, however, is a very special kind of
"community." The Research Department has not come across any
statements which specifically name the father as responsible for the
"security, progress and unity of the family" as is stated in Bahiyyih
Nakhjavani's book, but it can be inferred from a number of the responsibilities
placed upon him, that the father can be regarded as the "head" of the
family. The members of a family all have duties and responsibilities towards
one another and to the family as a whole, and these duties and responsibilities
vary from member to member because of their natural relationships. The parents
have the inescapable duty to educate their children -- but not vice versa; the
children have the duty to obey their parents -- the parents do not obey the
children; the mother -- not the father -- bears the children, nurses them in
babyhood, and is thus their first educator; hence daughters have a prior right
to education over sons and, as the Guardian's secretary has written on his
behalf, "The task of bringing up a Baha'i child, as emphasized time and
again in Baha'i Writings, is the chief responsibility of the mother, whose
unique privilege is indeed to create in her home such conditions as would be
most conducive to both his material and spiritual welfare and advancement. The
training which a child first receives through his mother constitutes the
strongest foundation for his future development ..." A corollary of this
responsibility of the mother is her right to be supported by her husband -- a
husband has no explicit right to be supported by his wife. This principle of
the husband's responsibility to provide for and protect the family can be seen
applied also in the law of intestacy which provides that the family's dwelling
place passes, on the father's death, not to his widow, but to his eldest son;
the son at the same time has the responsibility to care for his mother.
