Parents are the primary catechists of their children and are called to create a household of faith in which their children grow closer to God and learn daily about their faith. Parents are also reminded to continue to grow in their own faith as lifelong catechesis is a responsibility of all Catholics.
The family’s catechetical activity has a special character, which is a sense irreplaceable…Education in the faith by parents, which should begin from the children’s tenderest age, is already being given when the members of a family help each other to grow in faith through the witness of their Christian lives, a witness that is often without words but which perseveres throughout a day-today life lived in accordance with the Gospel. This catechesis is more incisive when, in the course of family events (such as the reception of the sacraments, the celebration of great liturgical feasts, the birth of a child, a bereavement) care is taken to explain in the home the Christian or religious content of these events. But that is not enough: Christian parents must strive to follow and repeat, within the setting of family life the more methodical reaching received elsewhere. The fact that these truths about the main questions of faith and Christian living are thus repeated within a family setting impregnated with love and respect will often make it possible to influence the children in a decisive way for life. The parents themselves profit from the effort that this demands of them, for in a catechetical dialogue of this sort each individual both receives and gives…Family catechesis therefore precedes, accompanies and enriches all other forms of catechesis. Catechesis in our Time, St. John Paul II