Chapter 11:
Duty to Parents

Man seems to have a lazy tendency to make prescription [see Glossary] always take the place of reason. . . . The rights of kings are deduced in a direct line from the King of kings; and that of parents from our first parent.

Why do we thus go back for principles that should always rest on the same base and have the same weight to-day that they had a thousand years ago—and not a jot more? If parents do their duty, they have a strong hold and sacred claim on the gratitude of their children; but few parents are willing to receive the respectful affection of their offspring on those terms. They demand blind obedience, because they don’t deserve a reasonable service ·that their children might willingly provide with their eyes open·; and to make these demands of weakness and ignorance more binding, a mysterious sanctity is spread around the most arbitrary principle. ‘Arbitrary’? Well, what other name can be given to the blind duty of obeying vicious or weak beings merely because they obeyed a powerful instinct? [MW is referring to the parents’ sexual ‘instinct’: their ‘obedience’ to that led to the coupling that caused the children to come into existence.] The simple definition of the two-way duty that naturally holds between parent and child can be stated in a few words:

The parent who pays proper attention to helpless infancy has a right to require the same attention when the feebleness of age comes upon him.

But to subjugate a rational being to the mere will of another when he is old enough to answer to society for his own conduct is cruel and improper; and it may be as harmful to morality as are the religious systems that make God’s will the sole source of the line between right and wrong.

I never knew a parent who had paid more than common attention to his children who was then disregarded by the children; on the contrary, the early habit of relying almost unquestioningly on the opinion of a respected parent is not easy to shake off, even when mature reason convinces the child that his father is not the wisest man in the world. This is an attractive weakness, but it is a weakness, and a reasonable man should steel himself against it, because the all-too-common belief that one is obliged to obey a parent just because he is one’s parent shackles the mind and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.

I distinguish the natural duty to parents from the accidental duty to parents.

The parent who carefully tries to form the heart and enlarge the understanding of his child has given to the performance of a duty that is common to the whole animal world a dignity that only reason can give. This is the •parental affection of humanity, and leaves •instinctive natural affection far behind. Such a parent acquires all the rights of the most sacred friendship, and his advice—even when his child is fully adult—demands serious consideration.

With respect to marriage: after 21 years a parent seems to have no right to withhold his consent for any reason, but twenty years of parental care deserve something in return, and the son ought at least to promise not to marry for two or three years if the woman of his choice doesn’t entirely meet with the approval of his first friend.

But respect for parents is generally speaking a much lower cause of action, namely a selfish respect for property. The father who is blindly obeyed is obeyed from sheer weakness or from motives that degrade the human character.

Much of the misery that wanders in hideous forms around the world is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents; and yet these are the people who cling most tightly to what they call a ‘natural right’, though it undermines man’s birthright, the right to act as his own reason directs.

I have already often pointed out that vicious or idle people are always eager to profit from the enforcement of arbitrary privileges, usually in proportion to their neglect of the duties that might make the privileges reasonable. This is basically a dictate of common sense—i.e. the instinct of self-defence— that is typical of ignorant weakness, resembling the instinct that makes a fish muddy the water it swims in to escape its enemy, instead of boldly facing it in the clear stream.

The supporters of any kind of prescription do indeed fly from the clear stream of argument. Taking refuge in the darkness that. . . .has been supposed to surround God’s throne, they dare to demand the immediate and total respect that is due only to his unsearchable ways. (Don’t misunderstand me: the darkness that hides our God from us only concerns speculative truths—it never obscures moral ones, which shine clearly. . . .)

Females in all countries are too much under the dominion of their parents; and few parents think of addressing their children like this:

It is your interest to obey me until you can judge for yourself; and ·God·, the Almighty Father of all, has implanted in me an affection to serve as your guardian while your reason is unfolding; but when your mind arrives at maturity, you must obey me—or rather respect my opinions—only to the extent that they coincide with the light that is breaking in on your own mind.

A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind. Locke was right when he said that ‘if the mind is curbed and humbled too much in children—if their spirits are abased and broken by too strict a hand over them—they lose all their vigour and industry’. This strict hand may to some extent explain the weakness of women; because girls are for various reasons more kept down by their parents, in every sense of the word ‘down’, than boys are. The duty expected from them is, like all the duties arbitrarily imposed on women, based less on reason than on a sense of propriety, on respect for decorum; and by being taught slavishly to submit to their parents girls are prepared for the slavery of marriage. [MW concedes that some married women are not slaves, but they, she says, become tyrants. She also says that not all boys and girls are slaves to their parents, but continues her campaign on behalf of those who are. She emphatically contrasts parents who ‘have allowed a natural parental affection to take root in their hearts’ with those who are motivated by ‘selfish pride’. The former, she says, will be rewarded by ‘filial reverence’.]

Why should the minds of children be warped when they are just beginning to expand, only to favour the laziness of parents who insist on a privilege without being willing to pay the price for it fixed by nature?. . . . A right always includes a duty; and I think we can fairly infer from this that those who don’t perform the duty don’t retain the right.

. . . .I believe that in general the affection we inspire ·in others· always resembles the affection that we cultivate ·in ourselves·; so that natural affections—which have been supposed to be almost distinct from reason—are more nearly connected with judgment than is commonly allowed. Indeed, the affections that merely reside in the heart ·with no input from the head· seem to have a kind of animal capriciousness; I offer that as another proof of the necessity of cultivating the female understanding.

It is the irregular exercise of parental authority that first injures the mind, and girls are more subject to these irregularities than boys are. The will of those who never allow their will to be disputed except when they happen to be in a good mood is almost always unreasonable. [MW describes and deplores the tricks that little girls practice in order to cope with this kind of parental authority. Then:] I have been led into a melancholy train of reflection about females, concluding that when their first affection must •lead them astray or •make their duties clash until they rest on mere whims and customs, little can be expected from them as they grow older. How indeed can an instructor remedy this evil? for to teach children virtue on any solid principle is to teach them to despise their parents. Children ought not to be taught to make allowance for their parents’ faults, because every such allowance weakens the force of reason in their minds, and makes them still more indulgent to their own faults. It is a sublime virtue of maturity that leads us to be hard on ourselves and forbearing towards others; but children should be taught only the simple virtues, for if they begin too early to make allowance for human passions and manners, they’ll wear off the fine edge of the criterion by which they should regulate their own. . . . [A few years before this was written, Mary Wollstonecraft had been governess to the children of Lord and Lady Kingsborough. Many facts could help to explain why her relationship with Lady Kingsborough went sour, so that eventually she was dismissed; the content of this paragraph may be part of the story! There is another side-light on it here.]

The affections of children and weak people are always selfish: they love their relatives because they are loved by them, not because of their virtues. But until esteem and love are blended together in the •first affection, and reason is made the basis for the •first duty, morality will stumble at the threshold. . . .