In plain words
Rāma: “Mother! I am going to the forest by my father's command,” He said, and bowed to her. Then she looked at Rāma: “My son! You are the son born to me after long, long waiting. You are the gift of grace won through many yajñas and yāgas. I cannot bear to be without you even for a moment,” Kausalyā pleaded, holding both of Rāma's hands. Then Rāma went on telling Kausalyā many fine precepts: “For a wife, the husband alone is God. However dear a son may be to his mother, he is not above her husband. So, “Ātmānāṃ putranāmāsi”: the father's own Ātma has been born as the son. I am only the reflection, but my father is the original; serving my father is your chief dharma, but coming with me to the forest is not your dharma”: so Rāma taught “the dharma of women” firmly, and in many ways.
Here, in Sītā's case, when Rāma told her, ‘Stay and serve your father-in-law and mother-in-law,’ all those things came back clearly to Sītā's mind: “Rāma! Is there one teaching for your mother and another for me? There you taught that “service to the husband” is a wife's very life, did you not! Does that teaching concern only Kausalyā? Has it nothing to do with me? Serving my husband is the very breath of my life, before all else. So you need not grieve over me in the least. To keep your own word, take me with you to the forest,” she said; and she told Him, “You are going to keep your father's word, and I am coming to keep my husband's word.” So Rāma went on showing forth such bonds and ties between wife and husband as so sacred an ideal.
In the Rāmāyaṇa: the part Bharata played
The line of Ikṣvāku was renowned for upholding Satya. A line that had won true glory. So the clans and families of those days lived with this much trust. Though Kaikeyī wanted the kingdom handed over to her son Bharata, he did not agree to it. Bharata did not rejoice that ‘the very kingdom my father gave, the very kingdom my mother asked for’ had come to him; holding that for him to rule, unjustly and unlawfully, the kingdom that Rāmacandra, the eldest son, should rule would bring ‘disgrace’ on the Ikṣvāku line itself, he gave it up and spurned it. Not only did he refuse: “In that kingdom I will not set foot; that throne I will not look upon. For the sake of this paltry kingdom, shall I turn to dust the “good name” handed down from the days of our forefathers? Today, when Rāma has gone to the forests to keep “his father's command”, I too will go to the forest to guard “the glory of our line”. So I do not want this kingdom,” he said.
At last, in keeping with dharma, he brought “Śrī Rāma's sandals” to the village of “Nandi”, set them on the throne, put on the guise of an ascetic himself and spent his days there. Would anyone let slip a chance that came like this? Would anyone kick away wealth that came looking for him? No, no. This is not wealth. Bharata clearly recognised the truth that for him this was “disgrace”, and acted on it. So the Rāmāyaṇa sets out clearly the ideal of how each family, each individual, should carry out their duty.