Motherhood

message given by the First Presidency at General Conference in 1942

"By bringing these choice spirits to earth, each father and each mother assume ... an obligation of the most sacred kind, because the fate of that spirit in the eternities to come, the blessings or punishments which shall await it in the hereafter, depend, in great part, upon the care, the teachings, the training which the parents shall give to that spirit.  No parent can escape that obligation and that responsibility, and for the proper meeting thereof, the Lord will hold us to a strict accountability.  No loftier duty than this can be assumed by mortals... Motherhood thus becomes a holy calling, a sacred dedication for carrying out the Lord's plans, a consecration of devotion to the uprearing and fostering, the nurturing in body, mind, and spirit, of those who kept their first estate and who come to this earth for their second estate to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.  To lead them to keep their second estate is the work of motherhood, and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever."