The change in the relation between parents and children is a particular example of the general spread of democracy. Parents are no longer sure of their rights as against their children; children no longer feel that they owe respect to their parents. The virtue of obedience, which was formerly exacted without question, has become unfashionable, and rightly so. Psycho-analysis has terrified educated parents with the fear of the harm they may unwittingly do their children. If they kiss them, they may produce an Oedipus complex; if they do not they may produce a fury of jealousy. If they order the children to do things they may be producing a sense of sin; if they do not, the children acquire habits which the parents think undesirable. When they see their baby sucking his thumb, they draw all kinds of terrifying inferences, but they are quite at a loss as to what to do to stop him. Parenthood, which used to be a triumphant exercise of power, has become timid, anxious, and filled with conscientious doubts. The old simple joys are lost, and that at the very moment when, owing to the new freedom of single women, the mother has had to sacrifice much more than formerly in deciding upon maternity. In these circumstances conscientious mothers ask too little of their children, and unconscientious mothers ask too much. Conscientious mothers restrain their natural affection and become shy; unconscientious mothers seek in their children a compensation for the joys that they have had to forgo. In the one case the child’s affections are starved, in the other they are over-stimulated. In neither case is there any of that simple and natural happiness that the family at its best can provide.
In view of all these troubles, is it any wonder that the birth-rate declines? The decline of the birth-rate in the population at large has reached a point which shows that the population will soon begin to dwindle, but among the well-to-do classes this point has long ago been passed, not only in one country, but in practically all the most highly civilised countries. There are not very many statistics available as to the birth-rate among the well-to-do, but two facts may be quoted from Jean Ayling’s book alluded to above. It appears that in Stockholm in the years 1919 to 1922 the fertility of professional women was only one-third of that of the population at large, and that among the four thousand graduates of Wellesley College, U.S.A., in the period 1896 to 1913 the total number of children is about three thousand, whereas to prevent an actual dwindling of the stock there should have been eight thousand children none of whom had died young. There can be no doubt the civilisation produced by the white races has this singular characteristic, that in proportion as men and women absorb it, they become sterile. The most civilised are the most sterile; the least civilised are the most fertile; and between the two there is a continual gradation. At present the most intelligent sections of the Western nations are dying out. Within a very few years the Western nations as a whole will be diminishing in numbers except in so far as their stocks are replenished by immigration from less civilised regions. And as soon as the immigrants acquire the civilisation of the country of their adoption they in turn will become comparatively sterile. It is clear that a civilisation which has this characteristic is unstable; unless it can be induced to reproduce its numbers, it must sooner or later die out and give place to some other civilisation in which the urge towards parenthood has retained enough strength to prevent the population from declining.
Official moralists in every Western country have endeavoured to treat this problem by means of exhortations and sentimentality. On the one hand, they say that it is the duty of every married couple to have as many children as God wills, regardless of any prospect that such children may have of health and happiness. On the Other hand, male divines prate about the sacred joys of motherhood and pretend that a large family of diseased and poverty-stricken infants is a source of happiness. The State joins in with the argument that an adequate crop of cannon fodder is necessary, for how can all these exquisite and ingenious weapons of destruction function adequately unless there are sufficient populations left for them to destroy? Strange to say, the individual parent, even if he accepts these arguments as applied to others, remains entirely deaf to them as applied to himself. The psychology of the divines and the patriots is at fault. The divines may succeed so long as they can successfully threaten hell-fire, but it is only a minority of the population that now takes this threat seriously. And no threat short of this is adequate to control behaviour in a matter so essentially private. As for the State, its argument is altogether too ferocious. People may agree that others ought to provide cannon fodder, but they are not attracted by the prospect of having their own children used in this way. All that the State can do, therefore, is to endeavour to keep the poor in ignorance, an effort which, as the statistics show, is singularly unsuccessful except in the most backward of Western countries. Very few men or women will have children from a sense of public duty, even if it were far clearer than it is that any such public duty exists. When men and women have children, they do so either because they believe that children will add to their happiness, or because they do not know how to prevent them. The latter reason still operates very powerfully, but it is steadily diminishing in potency. And nothing that either the State or the Churches can do will prevent this diminution from continuing. It is necessary, therefore, if the white races are to survive, that parenthood should again become capable of yielding happiness to parents.
When one considers human nature apart from the circumstances of the present day, it is clear. I think, that parenthood is psychologically capable of providing the greatest and most enduring happiness that life has to offer. This, no doubt, is more true of women than of men, but is more true of men than most moderns are inclined to suppose. It is taken for granted in almost all literature before the present age. Hecuba cares more for her children than for Priam; MacDuff cares more for his children than for his wife. In the Old Testament both men and women are passionately concerned to leave descendants; in China and Japan this attitude has persisted down to our own day. It will be said that this desire is due to ancestor worship. I think, however, that the contrary is the truth, namely that ancestor worship is a reflection of the interest people take in the persistence of their family. Reverting to the professional women whom we were considering a moment ago, it is clear that the urge to have children must be very powerful, for otherwise none of them would make the sacrifices required in order to satisfy it. For my own part, speaking personally, I have found the happiness of parenthood greater than any other that I have experienced. I believe that when circumstances lead men or women to forgo this happiness, a very deep need remains ungratified, and that this produces a dissatisfaction and listlessness of which the cause may remain quite unknown. To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future. As a conscious sentiment, expressed in set terms, this involves no doubt a hyper-civilised and intellectual outlook upon the world, but as a vague instinctive emotion it is primitive and natural, and it is its absence that is hyper-civilised. A man who is capable of some great and remarkable achievement which sets its stamp upon future ages may gratify this feeling through his work, but for men and women who have no exceptional gifts, the only way to do so is through children. Those who have allowed their procreative impulses to become atrophied have separated themselves from the stream of life, and in so doing have run a grave risk of becoming desiccated. For them, unless they are exceptionally impersonal, death ends all. The world that shall come after them does not concern them, and because of this their doings appear to themselves trivial and unimportant. To the man or woman who has children and grandchildren and loves them with a natural affection, the future is important, at any rate to the limit of their lives, not only through morality or through an effort of imagination, but naturally and instinctively. And the man whose interests have been stretched to this extent beyond his personal life is likely to be able to stretch then still further. Like Abr
aham, he will derive satisfaction from the thought that his seed are to inherit the promised land even if this is not to happen for many generations. And through such feelings he is saved from the sense of futility which otherwise deadens all his emotions.
The basis of the family is, of course, the fact that parents feel a special kind of affection towards their own children, different from that which they feel towards each other or towards other children. It is true that some parents feel little or no parental affection, and it is also true that some women are capable of feeling an affection for children not their own almost as strong as that which they could feel for their own. Nevertheless, the broad fact remains that parental affection is a special kind of feeling which the normal human being experiences towards his or her own children, but not towards any other human being. This emotion is one which we inherit from our animal ancestors. In this respect Freud seems to me not sufficiently biological in his outlook, for anyone who will observe an animal mother with her young can see that her behaviour towards them follows an entirely different pattern from her behaviour towards the male with whom she has sex relations. And this same different and instinctive pattern, though in a modified and less definite form, exists among human beings. If it were not for this special emotion there would be almost nothing to be said for the family as an institution, since children might equally well be left to the care of professionals. As things are, however, the special affection which parents have for children, provided their instincts are not atrophied, is of value both to the parents themselves and to the children. The value of parental affection to children lies largely in the fact that it is more reliable than any other affection. One’s friends like one for one’s merits, one’s lovers for one’s charms; if the merits or the charms diminish, friends and lovers may vanish. But it is in times of misfortune that parents are most to be relied upon, in illness, and even in disgrace if the parents are of the right sort. We all feel pleasure when we are admired for our merits, but most of us are sufficiently modest at heart to feel that such admiration is precarious. Our parents love us because we are their children, and this is an unalterable fact, so that we feel more safe with them than with anyone else. In times of success this may seem unimportant, but in times of failure it affords a consolation and a security not to be found elsewhere.
In all human relations it is fairly easy to secure happiness for one party, but much more difficult to secure it for both. The gaoler* may enjoy guarding the prisoner; the employer may enjoy brow-beating the employee; the ruler may enjoy governing his subjects with a firm hand; and the old-fashioned father no doubt enjoyed instilling virtue into his son by means of the rod. These, however, are one-sided pleasures; to the other party in the transaction the situation is less agreeable. We have come to feel, that there is something unsatisfactory about these one-sided delights: we believe that a good human relation should be satisfying to both parties. This applies more particularly to the relations of parents and children, with the result that parents obtain far less pleasure from children than they did formerly, while children reciprocally suffer less at the hands of their parents than they did in bygone generations. I do not think there is any real reason why parents should derive less happiness from their children than they did in former times, although undoubtedly this is the case at present. Nor do I think that there is any reason why parents should fail to increase the happiness of their children. But this requires, as do all those equal relationships at which the modern world aims, a certain delicacy and tenderness, a certain reverence for another personality, which are by no means encouraged by the pugnacity of ordinary life. Let us consider the happiness of parenthood, first in its biological essence, and then as it may become in a parent inspired by that kind of attitude towards other personalities which we have been suggesting as essential to a world that believes in equality.
* gaoler = jailer /
The primitive root of the pleasure of parenthood is twofold. On the one hand there is the feeling of part of one’s own body externalised, prolonging its life beyond the death of the rest of one’s body, and possibly in its turn externalising part of itself in the same fashion, and so securing the immortality of the germ-plasm. On the other hand there is an intimate blend of power and tenderness. The new creature is helpless, and there is an impulse to supply its needs, an impulse which gratifies not only the parent’s love towards the child, but also the parent’s desire for power. So long as the infant is felt to be helpless, the affection which is bestowed upon it does not feel unselfish, since it is in the nature of protection to a vulnerable portion of oneself. But from a very early age there comes to be a conflict between love of parental power and desire for the child’s good, for, while power over the child is to a certain extent decreed by the nature of things, it is nevertheless desirable that the child should as soon as possible learn to be independent in as many ways as possible, which is unpleasant to the power impulse in a parent. Some parents never become conscious of this conflict, and remain tyrants until the children are in a position to rebel. Others, however, become conscious of it, and thus find themselves a prey to conflicting emotions. In this conflict their parental happiness is lost. After all the care that they have bestowed on the child, they find to their mortification that he turns out quite different from what they had hoped. They wanted him to be a soldier, and they find him a pacifist, or, like Tolstoy, they wanted him to be a pacifist, and he joins the Black Hundreds. But it is not only in these later developments that the difficulty is felt. If you feed an infant who is already capable of feeding himself, you are putting love of power before the child’s welfare, although it seems to you that you are only being kind in saving him trouble. If you make him too vividly aware of dangers, you are probably actuated by a desire to keep him dependent upon you. If you give him demonstrative affection to which you expect a response, you are probably endeavouring to grapple him to you by means of his emotions. In a thousand ways, great and small, the possessive impulse of parents will lead them astray, unless they are very watchful or very pure in heart. Modern parents, aware of these dangers, sometimes lose confidence in handling their children, and become therefore even less able to be of use to them than if they permitted themselves spontaneous mistakes, for nothing causes so much worry in a child’s mind as lack of certainty and self-confidence on the part of an adult. Better than being careful, therefore, is to be pure in heart. The parent who genuinely desires the child’s welfare more than his or her power over the child will not need textbooks on psycho-analysis to say what should and what should not be done, but will be guided aright by impulse. And in that case the relation of parent and child will be harmonious from first to last, causing no rebellion in the child and no feeling of frustration in the parent. But this demands on the part of the parent from the first a respect for the personality of the child - a respect which must be not merely a matter of principle, whether moral or intellectual, but something deeply felt with almost mystical conviction to such a degree that possessiveness and oppression become utterly impossible. It is of course not only towards children that an attitude of this sort is desirable: it is very necessary in marriage, and in friendship also, though in friendship it is less difficult. In a good world it would pervade the political relations between groups of human beings, though this is so distant a hope that we need not linger over it. But universal as is the need for this kind of gentleness, it is needed most of all where children are concerned, because of their helplessness, and because their small size and feeble strength cause vulgar souls to despise them.
But to return to the problems with which this book is concerned, the full joy of parenthood in the modern world is only to be obtained by those who can deeply feel this attitude of respect towards the child of which I have been speaking. For to them there will be no irksome restraint upon their love of power, and no need to dread the bitter disillusionment which despotic parents experience when their children acquire freedom. And to the parent who has this attitude there is mor
e joy in parenthood than ever was possible to the despot in the hey-day of parental power. For the love that has been purged by gentleness of all tendency towards tyranny can give a joy more exquisite, more tender, more capable of transmuting the base metal of daily life into the pure gold of mystic ecstasy, than any emotion that is possible to the man still fighting and struggling to maintain his ascendancy in this slippery world.
While I attach a very high value to the parental emotion, I do not draw the inference, which is too commonly drawn, that mothers should do as much as possible themselves for their children. There is a convention on this subject which was all very well in the days when nothing was known about the care of children except the unscientific odds and ends that old women handed on to younger ones. Nowadays there is a great deal in the care of children which is best done by those who have made a special study of some department of this subject. In relation to that part of their education which is called ‘education’ this is recognised. A mother is not expected to teach her son the calculus, however much she may love him. So far as the acquisition of book-learning is concerned, it is recognised that children can acquire it better from those who have it than from a mother who does not have it. But in regard to many other departments in the care of children this is not recognised, because the experience required is not yet recognised. Undoubtedly certain things are better done by the mother, but as the child gets older, there will be an increasing number of things better done by someone else. If this were generally recognised, mothers would be saved a great deal of labour which is irksome to them, because it is not that in which they have professional competence. A woman who has acquired any kind of professional skill ought, both for her own sake and for that of the community, to be free to continue to exercise this skill in spite of motherhood. She may be unable to do so during the later months of pregnancy and during lactation, but a child over nine months old ought not to form an insuperable barrier to its mother’s professional activities. Whenever society demands of a mother sacrifices to her child which go beyond reason, the mother, if she is not unusually saintly, will expect from her child compensations exceeding those she has a right to expect. The mother who is conventionally called self-sacrificing is, in a great majority of cases, exceptionally selfish towards her children, for, important as parenthood is an element in life, it is not satisfying if it is treated as the whole of life, and the unsatisfied parent is likely to be an emotionally grasping parent. It is important, therefore, quite as much in the interests of the children as in those of the mother, that motherhood should not cut her off from all other interests and pursuits. If she has a real vocation for the care of children and that amount of knowledge which will enable her to care adequately for her own children, her skill ought to be more widely used, and she ought to be engaged professionally in the care of some group of children which may be expected to include her own. It is right that parents, provided they fulfil the minimum requirements insisted upon by the State, should have a say as to how their children are cared for and by whom, so long as they do not go outside the ranks of qualified persons. But there should be no convention demanding that every mother should do herself what some other woman can do better. Mothers who feel baffled and incompetent when faced with their children as many mothers do, should have no hesitation in having their children cared for by women who have an aptitude for this work and have undergone the necessary training. There is no heavensent instinct which teaches women the right thing to do by their children, and solicitude when it goes beyond a point is a camouflage for possessiveness. Many a child is psychologically ruined by ignorant and sentimental handling on the part of its mother. It has always been recognised that fathers cannot be expected to do very much for their children, and yet children are quite as apt to love their fathers as to love their mothers. The relation of the mother to the child will have in future to resemble more and more that which at present the father has, if women’ s lives are to be freed from unnecessary slavery and children are to be allowed to profit by the scientific knowledge which is accumulating as to the care of their minds and bodies in early years.
The Conquest of Happiness Page 13