Little Essays of Love and Virtue | Page 8

in pity of them, of putting an end to their misery?" It was
generally the opinion of the parents themselves, but in some countries
the parents have dominated and overawed their children to the time of
their natural death and even beyond, up to the point of ancestor worship,
as in China, where no man of any age can act for himself in the chief
matters of life during his parents' life-time, and to some extent in
ancient Rome, whence an influence in this direction which still exists in

the laws and customs of France.[4] Both extremes have proved
compatible with a beautifully human life. To steer midway between
them seems to-day, however, the wisest course. There ought to be no
reason, and under happy conditions there is no reason, why the
relationship between parent and child, as one of mutual affection and
care, should ever cease to exist. But that the relationship should
continue to exist as a tie is unnatural and tends to be harmful. At a
certain stage in the development of the child the physical tie with the
parent is severed, and the umbilical cord cut. At a later stage in
development, when puberty is attained and adolescence is feeling its
way towards a complete adult maturity, the spiritual tie must be severed.
It is absolutely essential that the young spirit should begin to essay its
own wings. If its energy is not equal to this adventure, then it is the part
of a truly loving parent to push it over the edge of the nest. Of course
there are dangers and risks. But the worst dangers and risks come of the
failure to adventure, of the refusal to face the tasks of the world and to
assume the full function of life. All that Freud has told of the paralysing
and maiming influence of infantile arrest or regression is here
profitable to consider. In order, moreover, that the relationship between
parents and children may retain its early beauty and love, it is essential
that it shall adapt itself to adult conditions and the absence of ties so
rendered necessary. Otherwise there is little likelihood of anything but
friction and pain on one side or the other, and perhaps on both sides.
[4] The varying customs of different peoples in this matter are set forth
by Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, Ch.
XXV.
The parents have not only to train their children: it is of at least equal
importance that they should train themselves. It is desirable that
children, as they grow up, should be alive to this necessity, and
consciously assist in the process, since they are in closer touch with a
new world of activities to which their more lethargic parents are often
blind and deaf. For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh
education, and there is no stage for which so little educational
preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period. Yet
at no time--especially in women, who present all the various stages of

the sexual life in so emphatic a form--would education be more
valuable. The great burden of reproduction, with all its absorbing
responsibilities, has suddenly been lifted; at the same time the
perpetually recurring rhythm of physical sex manifestations, so often
disturbing in its effect, finally ceases; with that cessation, very often,
after a brief period of perturbation, there is an increase both in physical
and mental energy. Yet, too often, all that one can see is that a vacuum
has been created, and that there is nothing to fill it. The result is that the
mother--for it is most often of the mother that complaint is
made--devotes her own new found energies to the never-ending task of
hampering and crushing her children's developing energies. How many
mothers there are who bring to our minds that ancient and almost
inspired statement concerning those for whom "Satan finds some
mischief still"! They are wasting, worse than wasting, energies that
might be profitably applied to all sorts of social service in the world.
There is nothing that is so much needed as the "maternal in politics," or
in all sorts of non-political channels of social service, and none can be
better fitted for such service than those who have had an actual
experience of motherhood and acquired the varied knowledge that such
experience should give. There are numberless other ways, besides
social service, in which mothers who have passed the age of forty,
providing they possess the necessary aptitudes, can more profitably
apply themselves than in hampering, or pampering, their adult children.
It is by wisely cultivating their activities in a larger sphere that women
whose chief duties in the narrower domestic sphere are over may better
ensure their own happiness and the welfare