In the modern State, the following ideas as to parental authority are generally prevalent. Parental authority involves duties as well as rights. Our laws give rights to parents only in order to enable them to fulfil their duties. They are, in a sense, plenipotentiaries of the State, entrusted with the duty of bringing up their children in a state of bodily, mental, and moral health, and of ensuring that these children shall develop in such a way that they will be useful to society. To enable them to attain these ends, parents are endowed with certain rights. Just as, in the matter of public education, the State enforces upon the child a minimum of school attendance, even against the wishes of the parents, so also, in the general upbringing of children, the State enforces a certain standard, with which all parents have to comply. _The Elementary Principles of State Interference with Parental Authority._ (_The State as “Over-Parent.”_)--The modern State interferes with parental authority in accordance with the following principles. It is impossible for the State to supervise in detail the domestic life of millions of families, or to examine the soundness of the upbringing which millions of parents provide for their children. For these reasons, the State can intervene only in cases in which the conviction arises that by the conduct of the parents the mental or physical well-being of the child has been endangered, and thereby the interest of the State seriously threatened. If one endowed with parental authority has disturbed the natural foundations of that authority by criminal offences or immoral conduct, and has thus shown himself unworthy of the confidence exhibited in him by the State which has hitherto permitted him to exercise parental authority, the State is fully justified in depriving him of his delegated powers. In its own interest, in such cases, the State is compelled to withdraw the parental authority wholly or partially, and even to order that the child shall be removed from its parents’ house, to be brought up in a suitable family, in a reformatory school, or in some other institution (_Zwangserzichung_, _Fürsorgeerzichung_). The legislator is not in a position to define in precise terms the cases in which parental authority should be withdrawn, or the child transferred to other guardianship than that of the parents; it must suffice to explain the general principles which the Boards of Guardianship (see note on last page) have to apply at their own discretion.