Chapter 14 Chapter Thirteen Family

Of all the institutions handed down to us by our predecessors, none is more chaotic and deviant than the family of our day.Originally, parents' love for their children and children's love for their parents should be one of the greatest sources of happiness, but in today's real society, the relationship between parents and children has become the source of misfortune for both parties in 90% of cases. 99% of the time it becomes the source of misfortune for one of the parties.The failure of this family relationship to give people basic satisfaction is one of the deepest causes of the misfortune of our time.If an adult wants to maintain a relaxed relationship with his children, or give them a happy life, he must think deeply about how to be a good parent and then act wisely.The problems of the family are too great to be discussed in their entirety; in this chapter we can only deal with those parts which are relevant to our present topic, namely, the pursuit of happiness.And even for this small part, we can only limit it within a certain range, that is, limit its improvement within the scope of individual ability, without causing changes in the entire social structure.

This is, of course, a very strict limitation, since in our time the causes of family unhappiness are of the greatest variety, psychological, economic, social, educational, and political, to name a few.There are two reasons why motherhood is a much heavier burden for women than it used to be in the better classes of society.These two causes were, on the one hand, the opening to the careers of single women, and, on the other hand, the decline of the domestic servant service.In the past, women were forced to marry because they could not bear the living conditions of unmarried girls.At that time, an unmarried woman had to stay at home and depend financially first on her parents and then on some unwilling brother.She has no job to pass the time, no freedom to enjoy the outdoors. She has neither the opportunity nor the desire to engage in sexual adventures, and she is convinced that sex outside of marriage is abhorrent.If, against all odds, she was seduced by some scheming dandy and lost her virginity, her position would become extremely miserable.The novel "The Life of Pastor Wakefield" very vividly depicts this situation:

The only way to cover up sin / is to hide shame from all, / the way to make a lover repent / and mourn in his heart – only death. The modern unmarried woman does not have to consider the necessity of death in such a situation.If she is well educated, she can lead a comfortable life without difficulty, and thus can act independently of her parents.As parents lose their economic power over their daughters, they are less likely to express moral disapproval against their daughters.It is of course of little use to blame a man who does not wish to be blamed.Therefore, an unmarried woman in the professional class can enjoy a completely comfortable life as long as her IQ and appearance are not lower than the average person, before she wants to have children.But once the desire to have children got the better of her, she would have to marry, and would almost certainly lose her job, and her life would not be as comfortable as she had become used to, since the husband would probably earn more than she had. What's more, at this time, the income is not only needed to support a single woman as before, but to support a family.She had tasted the sweetness of being independent before, and now she found it mortifying to have to ask another person for every necessary expense.It was for these reasons that she hesitated to take the risk of being a mother.

A woman who is desperate and determined to be a mother finds herself, unlike previous generations of women, faced with a new and dire problem, namely, the difficulty of finding satisfactory domestic servants.The result of this problem is that she is preoccupied with household chores and is forced to do menial tasks that are totally out of proportion to her ability and education, or, if she does not do the work herself, she is punished by scolding the lazy. servant and bad mood.If she takes the trouble to understand such things in order to take care of the child's body, she will find that it is impossible to leave the child to the nurse, even the simplest things like cleanliness and hygiene, without taking great risks. , unless you have the money to hire a well-trained servant, and it cannot be done by others.A woman who is exhausted by such trifles is very lucky if she does not lose her wit and much of her intelligence, for if the woman is often only occupied with doing the housework herself, she will become Disgusted by the husband and disliked by the children.When the husband comes back from get off work in the evening, he will be bored with his wife when he hears him nagging about troubles all day long, and if he can't hear a word of nagging, he will think his wife is a fool.As for her relationship with the children, the sacrifices she had made for them were so vividly imprinted in her mind that she was almost bound to make unreasonable demands on them.At the same time, the habit formed by caring about trivial housework made her fuss and narrow-minded.It was the worst of all injustices she had to suffer: to work so hard for her family that she lost the love of it; and if she had kept her merry and docile out of the house, they might still have loved her.

These problems are economic in nature, as is another almost homogeneous and troubling problem.I refer to the difficulties caused by the dense population of large cities. In the Middle Ages the towns were as open as the countryside today, and the children still sing the ballad: A tree on the tip of Paul's Tower, Apples are too close to the people, Little dolls in the town of London, Take the long form and knock it down. Jump over the fence and run away, Run all the way to London Bridge. The spire of St Paul's is gone, as is the fence between it and London Bridge.It was centuries ago that little children in the city of London enjoyed the pleasures described in this ballad; but it was not so long ago that most people still lived in the country.The towns were not very large then; it was easy to get into the country, and within the towns it was easy to find parks next to residential areas.But right now, America has far more urban dwellers than rural ones.In the United States, this situation is not serious, but the urban population is also increasing rapidly. In large cities like London and New York, which occupy an extremely large area, it takes a long time to get out of the city.Residents living in cities often have to be content with owning an apartment that, of course, doesn't smell a bit of earth.Residents with low incomes can only be satisfied with extremely small spaces.If they have young children, life in the apartment can become difficult.There is no house in which children can play, and no house in which parents can escape from the noise of their children.As a result, working-class people increasingly tend to live in the suburbs of cities.This is of course very pleasant from the child's point of view, but it adds a great deal of hardship to the adult's life, and thus greatly diminishes his role in the family.

But I'm reluctant to discuss such broad economic issues because they lie outside our concern, which is simply: What can an individual do in this moment to find happiness?We approached this topic when we spoke of the psychological dilemmas that exist today in parent-child relationships, which are actually one of the problems created by democracy.In the past, there were masters and slaves in society: the master decided what should be done, and in general, the master still liked his slaves, because the slaves gave them happiness.Slaves may have hated their masters, but this was not as common as democratic theory presumes.But even if they hate their master, the master knows nothing about it, so the master is happy anyway.All this has changed since the widespread acceptance of democratic theory: the traditionally tame slave is no longer tame, and the master who has always had no doubts about his rights has become vacillating.Between the two parties, conflict occurs and misfortune ensues.I am not saying that all of these views are aimed at opposing democracy.Because the dilemma in these problems is really unavoidable in any major transformation period.But it would also certainly be useless to dismiss the fact that, while transformation continues, it fills the world with unhappiness.

The changing relationship between parent and child is one of the classic examples of the widespread spread of democratic ideas.Parents no longer feel certain of their own privileges over their children, and children no longer feel obliged to show respect to their parents.The virtue of obedience, once unquestioned, is no longer in vogue, and rightly so.Psychoanalysis makes educated parents panic, fearful of unknowingly doing harm to their children.If they kiss the child, this may create an Oedipus complex; if they do not kiss, it may cause the children to be jealous.If parents order their children to do something, they may feel guilty; if they don't order, children will put on habits that are not popular with their parents.When they see a baby sucking their thumb, they come up with a myriad of horrible explanations, but are at a loss as to how to stop him. The normally dignified parents are now impotent, anxious, and full of doubts.Gone are the old, unadorned joys.And because of the new freedom of the single woman, a woman has to make a greater sacrifice than ever before in deciding to become a mother.In these cases, the prudent mother asks too little of her child, while the brusque mother asks too much.The former suppressed his instinctive love and became shy; the latter wanted to make up for the happiness he had reluctantly given up on the children.In the former case, the child's love is not satisfied; in the latter case, the child's love is overstimulated.In short, neither has the kind of unadorned happiness that only a perfect family can provide.

Given these predicaments, who else should be surprised by a decline in fertility?The decline in fertility has generally reached such a magnitude that the population is already showing signs of shrinking.In the wealthy classes, however, this margin has long been exceeded, not only in one country, but in fact in all highly civilized countries.There are not many statistics to cite about the fertility rate of the wealthy, but from the work of Gene Alling mentioned in L's article, we can cite two facts. Between 1919 and 1922, working women in Stockholm had only one-third of the birth rate of all women. From 1896 to 1913, the total number of children born to 4,000 graduates of Whistley University in the United States was about 3,000. However, in order to prevent the actual shrinkage of the population, 8,000 children must be needed, and none of them died young.It is undoubtedly a very curious feature of the civilization of the white race, that the degree to which the people assimilate this civilization is in inverse proportion to their rate of birth.The most civilized are the least fertile, the least civilized the most, and there is a gradation between them.The brightest parts of the present two nations are dying away, and in a few years the whole Western peoples will be reduced in number, unless replenished by immigrants from less civilized lands.And once immigrants take over the country's civilization, they will gradually decrease.Clearly, a civilization of this character is extremely unstable.Unless it can keep increasing its own population, sooner or later it will die out altogether, giving way to some other civilization in which the parental urge has preserved enough strength to hold back the decline of the population.

In all Western countries official moralists try to solve this problem by exhortation and tenderness.On the one hand, they declared that every couple should have children as God intended, regardless of whether those children possessed health and happiness.On the other hand, the male priests babbled about the holy joys of motherhood, about the source of happiness in a large family full of bony and impoverished people.The government joins in this exhortation, saying that a considerable amount of cannon fodder is necessary, for what good are all these fine weapons if there are not enough men to destroy them?Oddly enough, a parent who admits that these claims apply to others turns a deaf ear when it comes to applying them to himself.The psychology of priests and patriots is completely wrong.The teaching only succeeds when it works to frighten people with hellfire, but not many people now believe in such intimidation.Any intimidation, if it is not strong enough, can never influence the most secret behavior of people.As for the government's rhetoric, it is indeed too cruel and ruthless.People may agree to let other people serve as dust, but they will never want their own children to do the same.The only response the government can take, then, is to keep the poor as ignorant as possible.But as the statistics show, such efforts are completely unfeasible except in some of the most backward places in the West.Even if there were any public duty, it would be rare for anyone to have children out of a sense of it.They bear children either because they believe they will bring them new pleasures, or because they know nothing about how to prevent them from being born.The latter situation is still more common today, but it is gradually decreasing.Whether the government or the church, no matter what actions they take, they will not be able to stop this trend of population shrinkage.Therefore, if the white man wants to continue the race, he must make parenthood happy again.

When one considers only human nature and disregards actual circumstances, I think parenthood is clearly psychologically capable of enjoying the greatest and most enduring happiness that life has to offer.This, no doubt, is more true of women than of men; and more true of men than many moderns suppose.This has been recognized by all the past documents. Hecuba cares far more about his children than he does about his husband, and McDiff takes more care of his daughter than his wife.In the Old Testament, both men and women were eager to carry on the family line; in China and Japan, this spirit is still alive today.Some people think that this desire comes from ancestor worship. I think the opposite is true, that is, ancestor worship is a manifestation of human beings' emphasis on the continuation of the lineage.Contrary to the working women we have mentioned before, the urge to procreate must be very strong, otherwise no one would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to satisfy this urge.In my personal opinion, the happiness of being a parent is greater than any happiness I have ever experienced.I believe that when circumstances induce a man or woman to forego this happiness, there must be left unsatisfied a very deep need, which in turn gives rise to a dissatisfaction and ennui, the causes of which are often unknown.To be happy in this world, especially after youth has passed, one must feel that one is not alone, that one's life will not run dry anytime soon, but that one is part of the river of life, which originates from the first cell and flows to the distant Mysterious future.As a conscious emotion, expressed in proper terms, it is indeed a very civilized and intelligent view of the world; but as a vague instinctive emotion, it is primitive, natural, and The height of civilization is very different.A man who achieves great and extraordinary achievements will naturally go down in history, and can use his work to meet the needs of life continuity.But those people with mediocre talents can only use children to chat and masturbate.He who atrophies the urge to procreate has separated himself from the river of life, and thus risks drying it up.For them, except for those who are particularly detached, death means the end of everything.The world behind them doesn't care about them anymore, and because of that, what they do seems trivial and unimportant to them.To a man who has many sons and daughters around his knees, if he loves them with a natural feeling, the future matters, at least as long as he lives.This feeling is not only moral or imaginative, but also natural and instinctive.A man who is able to extend his interest beyond his personal life is likely to extend it farther afield.Like Abraham, he found great satisfaction in the thought that his descendants would inherit the blessings, even though the inheritance would not be realized until many generations later.It was through this feeling that he escaped the emptiness that nearly wiped out all his emotions.

The foundation of the family rests, of course, on the fact that parents have a special love for their own children, which is distinct from their love for each other and from their love for other people's children.It is true that some parents love their children little or not at all; it is also true that some women love other people's children as strongly as they love their own children.Still, the pragmatism is clear: parental love is a special emotion that normal people give to their children, not to anyone else, an emotion inherited from our animal ancestors.In this respect it seems to me that Freud did not take adequate account of the biological aspects of sex, since whoever observes how a female treats her young will find that her behavior towards her young is not the same as her behavior towards her young. The behavior of the male partner in a sexual relationship is quite dichotomous.This difference also exists among humans, but it is slightly different and less pronounced.If this special love did not exist, then the family as an institution would be irrelevant to happiness, because as long as the children were brought up by specialists, everything would be fine.In reality, however, this special love for the child is of great value not only to the child but to themselves, so long as the instincts of parents do not abate.The value of parental affection for the child is that it is more reliable and trustworthy than any other emotion.Friends love you because of your strengths, lovers love you because of your charm, if the strengths and charm no longer exist, friends and lovers may leave quietly.But in adversity, parents are the most trustworthy and dependable people. Whether in sickness or humiliation, if they are really good parents, they will still love their children instinctively.We feel happy when others compliment us, but most of us have a feeling of insecurity.Parents love us because we are their children. This is an unchangeable fact, so we feel that they are more trustworthy than anyone else.In good times, it may not matter; but in bad times, it will be an irreplaceable comfort and shelter. In all human relations, it is relatively easy to ensure the happiness of a group, but it is extremely difficult to ensure the happiness of everyone.A jailer may take pleasure in guarding prisoners; an employer may take pleasure in threatening his employees; a ruler may take pleasure in oppressing his subjects; and a rigid father may take pleasure in teaching his children with a stick.It's all one-sided joy, though; it's unacceptable on the other side.We feel that these one-sided pleasures are unsatisfying, and we believe that truly good relationships should be mutually satisfying.This especially applies to parent-child relationships.The result of mutual satisfaction can only be that the parents get more happiness from the children than in the past, and the children suffer less from the parents than before.I don't think there's really any reason why parents shouldn't get more joy out of their kids than they did in the past, even though they do.Nor do I see any reason why parents should not add more happiness to their children.But like all equal relationships pursued in modern society, this requires a certain degree of sensitivity and tenderness, as well as a certain respect for the personality of others.All of these are not advocated by the combative nature of everyday life.Let us consider the happiness of being a parent, first in terms of its biological nature, and second in the joy that parents can derive from treating their children with equal respect for the human beings of others. The original source of parental happiness is twofold.On the one hand, there is a sense that some part of one's own body has acquired a new appearance, which allows life to continue after the death of other parts, which in turn gives another part of its body in the same way. appearance, thus ensuring the immortality of the bloodline.On the other hand, the mixture of desire for power and tenderness makes the new life helpless, so the parents have the impulse to meet his needs. This impulse not only satisfies the parents' instinctive love for the child, but also satisfies the parents' desire desire for power.As long as you think the baby needs care, your love for him is not selfless, because it comes only from the protection of your own fragile nature.But at a very early stage, conflicts begin between the parents' desire for power and the child's own desires, because although power over a child is to a certain extent natural, it is also a good idea if the child learns to be independent as early as possible. A good thing—and a good thing that will deeply displease parents obsessed with their own desire for power.Some parents never know that this kind of conflict is going to happen, and when it happens, their emotions are greatly affected.In their view, this conflict takes away the happiness of being a parent.They care deeply about their children, and then become outraged when they discover that the child has turned out not to be what they expected.They wanted him to be a soldier, and he turned out to be a peace advocate; or, like Tolstoy, his parents always wanted him to be a peacemaker, and he joined the Black Hundreds.The distress, however, was not entirely due to later developments.If you feed a child who is already self-sufficient, you are prioritizing the satisfaction of power over the child's happiness, even though you are trying to minimize his troubles.If you have made him aware of the danger, it is probably because you want him to always depend on you.If you express your feelings directly to him and expect to reciprocate, then you are trying to control him emotionally.The possessiveness of parents can lead children in all sorts of ways, unless they are very careful or pure of heart.Today's parents, so aware of this danger, sometimes lose all confidence in their children.In this way, the help of the parents is not so beneficial to the child as the natural mistakes, for nothing worries the child more than a lack of decision and self-confidence in adults.Therefore, purity of heart is better than prudence.Parents who really want their children to be happy more than to be controlled by them have no need for psychoanalytic textbooks on what to do and what not to do. They act on impulse.In this case, the relationship between parent and child will be consistent throughout, neither repulsing the child nor disappointing the parent.But this requires parents to respect their children's personality from the very beginning-this kind of respect is not a kind of respect in principle, whether the principle is moral or cognitive.This respect should be deeply experienced as a kind of almost mystical belief, so as to completely abandon the desire of possession and oppression.Of course, this attitude is not only commendable in relation to children; it is also commendable in relation to marriage, and in friendship, if it can be done, though it is not so difficult in friendship.In a good world, it will permeate the political relations of human society, although this is a very remote hope, we need not hope that it will be pierced.Although people generally need this kind of attention, it is especially true for children, because they are helpless, because they are vulnerable. Let us return to the main topic of this book.If modern people want to be happy as parents, they must deeply feel the above-mentioned respect for children, because only in this way, parents will not become angry because of the suppressed desire for power, and will not gain freedom for their children. Independent and disillusioned. Parents with this attitude will find far more joy than authoritarian parents in the height of their power. Because this love cleanses all things with a gentle baptism. Despotic tendencies, which can give a finer, kinder, more magical way of translating the vulgarity of everyday life into pure-gold pleasures, and a man who is trying to maintain his place in this wobbling world , but it is impossible to obtain such happiness. When I value parental love, I don't come to the conclusion (as people tend to do) that parents should do as much as possible for their children.In the past, people knew nothing about how to care for children except the extremely unscientific and sporadic methods of raising land passed down from generation to generation among women.The custom of doing the best for children is a good thing in these days.Today, there are many things about parenting that can only be done well by those who have studied the subject carefully.Moreover, the education of children was only recognized by the general public when it became part of the so-called "pedagogy" of the university curriculum.A mother is not expected to teach her son calculus, no matter how much she loves him, because when it comes to intellectual acquisition, it is agreed that a child learns it much better from an expert than from a lay mother.But in many of these areas of children's education, since the required experience has not been recognized, very little is accepted.Some things are better done by the mother, but as the child grows up, there will be more and more things better done by others.If this is generally agreed upon, the mother can be spared a great deal of trouble, which is not her speciality.It is not only to her own advantage, but to society as a whole, that a woman who has learned a trade should continue to exercise her expertise freely even after becoming a mother.She may not be able to do so during the later stages of pregnancy and breastfeeding, but nine months after the baby is born, he should not be a hindrance to the mother's career.Whenever society demands unreasonably from a mother and makes unreasonable sacrifices for her child, the mother, if she is not so extraordinary as a saint, expects some kind of compensation from her child.In most cases, mothers, whom the custom calls self-sacrifice, tend to be extremely selfish toward their children, because although parenting can be more important than any other part of life, it leads to dissatisfaction if it is taken as the whole of life , and disgruntled parents are likely to hold their children emotionally.So it is best for a mother not to give up all other interests and careers for the benefit of both the child and the mother.If she has a gift for raising children, and has a good knowledge of raising children, then her talents should be used in a wider range.She should devote herself to raising a class of children, which may include her own.As long as the government's minimum requirements are met, parents should have the right to have a say in how their children should be brought up, provided the designated person is qualified to do the job.But it would be wrong to ask all mothers to do the work that individual women do well.It is not uncommon for mothers to be confronted with children who are in a hurry and unable to do anything. They should not hesitate to entrust their children to the upbringing of women who have the ability and the necessary training.There are no natural instincts that teach a woman how to raise a child, and excessive caring is often a disguise for possessiveness.There are many children who are disturbed by mothers who are both ignorant and sensitive.It has traditionally been thought that it is impossible for a father to know how to raise a child, but children love their fathers just as much as they love their mothers.If women's lives were freed from unnecessary servitude and children were allowed to benefit from increasing scientific knowledge concerning their physical and mental health, the relationship between mother and child must in the future become more and more like that between father and child today. relation.