For paternal affection Natural Selection has done much less than for
maternal; and it is easy to understand why. For, useful as the father’s
assistance is in securing various advantages to the growing child, yet
even if he should cruelly abandon it altogether, the maternal love would
still remain interposed to save and rear it.
Nor is it in the human race alone that paternal is weaker than maternal
love. Among mammals, as Horwicz remarks, we even come across a Herr Papa
occasionally who shows a great inclination to dine on his progeny. And
how irregularly the paternal—sometimes even the maternal—instinct is
displayed among savages is graphically shown by this group of cases
collected by Herbert Spencer:—
“As among brutes the philoprogenitive instinct is occasionally
suppressed by the desire to kill, and even devour, their young ones; so
among primitive men this instinct is now and again overridden by
impulses temporarily excited. Thus, though attached to their offspring,
Australian mothers, when in danger, will sometimes desert them; and if
we may believe Angas, men have been known to bait their hooks with the
flesh of boys they have killed. Thus, notwithstanding their marked
parental affection, Fuegians sell their children for slaves; thus, among
the Chonos Indians, a father, though doting on his boy, will kill him in
a fit of anger for an accidental offence. Everywhere among the lower
races we meet with like incongruities. Falkner, while describing the
paternal feelings of Patagonians as very strong, says they often pawn
and sell their wives and little ones to the Spaniards for brandy.
Speaking of the children of the Sound Indians, Bancroft says they ‘sell
or gamble them away.’ According to Simpson, the Pi-Edes ‘barter their
children to the Utes proper for a few trinkets or bits of clothing.’ And
of the Macusi, Schomburgk writes, ‘the price of a child is the same as
an Indian asks for his dog.’ This seemingly heartless conduct to
children often arises from the difficulty experienced in rearing them.”
Some light is thrown on the genesis and composition of parental
affection by the three reasons named by Spencer, why among savages and
semi-civilised peoples in general sons were much more appreciated than
daughters. While daughters were little more than an encumbrance to the
parents, useless before puberty, and lost to them after marriage, the
sons could make themselves useful in warding off the enemy, in avenging
personal injuries, and in performing the funeral rites for the benefit
of departed ancestors.
In a higher stage of civilisation it is probable that utilitarian
considerations of a somewhat different kind still formed a principal
ingredient in parental love. A son was valued as an assistant in
workshop or field, a daughter as a domestic drudge. Feelings of a
tenderer nature were of course sometimes present, but that they were not
general is shown by the fact, attested by numerous historic examples,
that the aim of our paternal ancestors in centuries past was to make
their children fear rather than love them.
A slight element of fear is indeed necessary for the maintenance of
filial respect and discipline; but our forefathers were too prone to
sacrifice their tender feelings of sympathy with their offspring to the
gratification of parental authority, for the obvious reason that the
latter feeling was stronger than the former. The frequency with which
daughters especially were forced to sacrifice their personal preferences
in marriage to the ambitions and whims of their father, affords the most
striking instance of the former embryonic state of parental affection.
In modern parental love Pride is perhaps the most conspicuous trait.
This Pride has two aspects—one comic, one serious. Nothing is more
amusing than the suddenness with which the “pride of authorship”
converts a bachelor’s well-known horror of babies into the young
father’s fantastic worship. Yet though he feels “like a little tin god
on wheels,” he recognises the superior rank of the young prince, spoils
his best trousers in kneeling before him, allows him to pull his
moustache and whiskers, and, indeed, shows a disposition towards
self-sacrifice almost worthy of a lover.
The serious side of the matter reveals one of the greatest differences
between paternal and maternal love. A mother’s love is largely
influenced by pity; hence she is very apt to lavish her fondest caresses
on that child which happens to be imperfect in some way—say a
cripple—and therefore unhappy. The father on the other hand, will show
most favour to his handsomest daughter, his most talented son; and
nothing will so swell a father’s heart and cause it to overflow with
affection as the news of some great distinction acquired by this son.