Of the Affection of Fathers for their Children

A great lady of our time, speaking of the extraordinary affection she bore her children, told me that she could not endure to see them stumble without feeling pain in her own legs. That is love — real love — which borrows the body of another for its suffering. But I have also met parents who loved with a love that was, at bottom, a love of themselves extended outward: they wanted their children to be brilliant because a brilliant child is a flattering mirror. They wanted them to be obedient because obedience is convenient. There is a great deal of this kind of parenthood, which calls itself affection but is closer to ownership.

I lost several children in infancy — at nurse, before I had learned their faces well. I do not say this with indifference, but I say it honestly: the grief I felt was not the grief of a father who has known his child, but something vaguer, more like a theoretical sorrow. I am not certain I have the natural warmth toward children that some men carry from birth. I find it easier to love a grown man or woman, formed and known, than an infant who is still entirely potential. This may be a deficiency in me. I note it without pride.

The love of children is sweet, but the love of friends is more clearly seen and more exactly repaid.

What I distrust most in the love of parents for children is the element of possession — the sense that what comes from us belongs to us, and must therefore resemble us, vindicate us, continue us. A father who is disappointed that his son has chosen a different trade, a different faith, a different life, is not suffering from too much love but from too little detachment. The child is his own creature, arrived at the parent only by accident of biology, and owes the parent nothing beyond ordinary gratitude. Anything beyond that should be freely given, on both sides, or it is not love but an arrangement.