Read it free first. J.C. Ryle died in 1900, so The Duties of Parents is public domain and the full text is available online at no cost from several Reformed sites. It is 38 pages. You can read the whole thing this evening without spending anything.
The previous version of this review recommended buying a paid edition and never mentioned that.
Who Ryle was
John Charles Ryle, 1816 to 1900, was the first Anglican Bishop of Liverpool. He wrote plainly on purpose, for ordinary working people rather than for clergy, and that is why he is still read when most of his contemporaries are not.
This edition, from Grace and Truth Books, prints the text as a standalone booklet.
What is in it
Seventeen duties. That is the structure, and the old review never said so. Ryle takes Proverbs 22:6, train up a child in the way he should go, and works out seventeen specific things that follow from it for a parent.
His central argument is uncomfortable and it is the reason to read it. Ryle’s contention is that most Christian parents are not failing through cruelty or neglect but through drift: assuming that a generally Christian household will produce Christian children without anyone deliberately doing anything. He does not think that works, and he says so at length.
He is also hard on the parent who will not correct a child because he wants to be liked. Ryle treats that as a failure of love rather than an excess of it.
Reading a Victorian text
Know what you are picking up. This is 19th-century English writing to 19th-century households. The tone is bracing to the point of severe, and Ryle’s assumptions about discipline, authority, and the ordering of a home belong to his century.
The translating is yours to do, and the theological spine survives it: that a father is accountable for what forms his children, and that this happens on purpose or not at all.
Honest notes
The old review credited it with reflection prompts sprinkled throughout and opportunities for family discussion. There are none. It is a Victorian pamphlet, not a workbook, and those features were invented.
It also described a review team, including a member who started bedtime discussions and another who committed to family devotions after reading it. There was no team and none of that happened. Removed.
Credit where due: the old post did correctly give the 38-page length.
Who should read it
A father who suspects he has been coasting and wants to be told so directly. Anyone who likes older writing and does not need it softened. Short enough that there is no excuse not to.
Skip it if you want practical, age-specific parenting technique, or if bluntness from a Victorian bishop is going to put you off rather than wake you up. And if you do want a copy on the shelf, buy it after you have read it free, not before.
The Duties of Parents on Amazon