“Mothers, be especially careful to regulate your daughters well . . . Be watchful over them, that they may be keepers at home. Above all, instruct them to be pious, modest, despisers of wealth, indifferent to ornament.
“For if you form them in this way, you will save not only them,
but the husband who is destined to marry them,
and not the husband only, but the children,
not the children only, but the grandchildren!
“For the root being made good, good branches will shoot forth, and still become better, and for all these you will receive a reward.
“Let us do all things therefore, as benefiting not only one soul, but many through that one. For they ought to go from their father's house to marriage, as combatants from the school of exercise, furnished with all necessary knowledge, and to be as leaven able to transform the whole lump to its own virtue.”
St. John Chrysostom (347 – 407).