In plain words
Sons grow into good men through the very noble resolves of their mother. So mothers must develop the noblest feelings and noble resolves, and must live by the noblest conduct.
You must surely have heard the name of Putlibai. She observed a vrata. After the vrata was over, she would not take her meal unless she heard the call of the cuckoo. One day, however much time went by, the cuckoo's call was not heard. The son realised that his mother would not eat until the cuckoo's call was heard. At once he went behind the house, called the way a cuckoo calls, came back inside and said, “Mother! The cuckoo has called, hasn't it! Now you may eat.” Realising that her son was telling a lie, the mother was deeply pained. “O God! What sin I must have committed, that such a speaker of Asatya has been born in my womb!” she lamented. Seeing that, the son too was deeply pained, and took a vow that from then on he would never speak Asatya. That very boy was Gandhi. From that day on he never once spoke Asatya. A mother's training is most essential for children. When children do wrong, we must not overlook it; we must rebuke them, punish them, and set them on the right path. For a wrong we must give a fitting punishment, and for good a fitting good reward.
Putlibai had a maidservant named Rambhā. As the saying goes, “Yathā rājā tathā prajā”: like Putlibai, Rambhā too had a pure heart. One day the boy Gandhi came running to her and said, “Rambhā! I am very frightened.” Then she: “My child! When Śrī Rāmacandra, the protector of the whole world, is there, why should you fear? Whenever you feel afraid, remember the Name of Rāma,” she advised him. From that day until he breathed his last, Gandhi went on remembering the Name of Rāma without a break.
“First to Mother....”
The good and the bad in children rest entirely on the mother's resolves. One small example. Long ago, in the war at Rangoon, a mother and her son lost all their own people and somehow reached Madras. They had neither food to eat nor a house to live in. Every day the mother went from house to house begging, gave what she got first to her son, and ate what was left herself.