Experienced parents, when children's rights are preached to them, very
naturally ask whether children are to be allowed to do what they like.
The best reply is to ask whether adults are to be allowed to do what
they like. The two cases are the same. The adult who is nasty is not
allowed to do what he likes: neither can the child who likes to be
nasty. There is no difference in principle between the rights of a
child and those of an adult: the difference in their cases is one of
circumstance. An adult is not supposed to be punished except by process
of law; nor, when he is so punished, is the person whom he has injured
allowed to act as judge, jury, and executioner. It is true that
employers do act in this way every day to their workpeople; but this is
not a justified and intended part of the situation: it is an abuse
of Capitalism which nobody defends in principle. As between child and
parent or nurse it is not argued about because it is inevitable. You
cannot hold an impartial judicial inquiry every time a child misbehaves
itself. To allow the child to misbehave without instantly making it
unpleasantly conscious of the fact would be to spoil it. The adult has
therefore to take action of some sort with nothing but his conscience
to shield the child from injustice or unkindness. The action may be a
torrent of scolding culminating in a furious smack causing terror
and pain, or it may be a remonstrance causing remorse, or it may be a
sarcasm causing shame and humiliation, or it may be a sermon causing the
child to believe that it is a little reprobate on the road to hell. The
child has no defence in any case except the kindness and conscience of
the adult; and the adult had better not forget this; for it involves a
heavy responsibility.
And now comes our difficulty. The responsibility, being so heavy, cannot
be discharged by persons of feeble character or intelligence. And yet
people of high character and intelligence cannot be plagued with the
care of children. A child is a restless, noisy little animal, with
an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and consequently a maddening
persistence in asking questions. If the child is to remain in the room
with a highly intelligent and sensitive adult, it must be told, and if
necessary forced, to sit still and not speak, which is injurious to
its health, unnatural, unjust, and therefore cruel and selfish beyond
toleration. Consequently the highly intelligent and sensitive adult
hands the child over to a nurserymaid who has no nerves and can
therefore stand more noise, but who has also no scruples, and may
therefore be very bad company for the child.
Here we have come to the central fact of the question: a fact nobody
avows, which is yet the true explanation of the monstrous system of
child imprisonment and torture which we disguise under such hypocrisies
as education, training, formation of character and the rest of it. This
fact is simply that a child is a nuisance to a grown-up person. What
is more, the nuisance becomes more and more intolerable as the grown-up
person becomes more cultivated, more sensitive, and more deeply engaged
in the highest methods of adult work. The child at play is noisy and
ought to be noisy: Sir Isaac Newton at work is quiet and ought to be
quiet. And the child should spend most of its time at play, whilst the
adult should spend most of his time at work. I am not now writing on
behalf of persons who coddle themselves into a ridiculous condition of
nervous feebleness, and at last imagine themselves unable to work
under conditions of bustle which to healthy people are cheerful and
stimulating. I am sure that if people had to choose between living where
the noise of children never stopped and where it was never heard, all
the goodnatured and sound people would prefer the incessant noise to the
incessant silence. But that choice is not thrust upon us by the nature
of things. There is no reason why children and adults should not see
just as much of one another as is good for them, no more and no less.
Even at present you are not compelled to choose between sending your
child to a boarding school (which means getting rid of it altogether on
more or less hypocritical pretences) and keeping it continually at home.
Most working folk today either send their children to day schools or
turn them out of doors. This solves the problem for the parents. It does
not solve it for the children, any more than the tethering of a goat in
a field or the chasing of an unlicensed dog into the streets solves
it for the goat or the dog; but it shews that in no class are people
willing to endure the society of their children, and consequently
that it is an error to believe that the family provides children with
edifying adult society, or that the family is a social unit. The family
is in that, as in so many other respects, a humbug. Old people and young
people cannot walk at the same pace without distress and final loss of
health to one of the parties. When they are sitting indoors they cannot
endure the same degrees of temperature and the same supplies of
fresh air. Even if the main factors of noise, restlessness, and
inquisitiveness are left out of account, children can stand with
indifference sights, sounds, smells, and disorders that would make an
adult of fifty utterly miserable; whilst on the other hand such
adults find a tranquil happiness in conditions which to children mean
unspeakable boredom. And since our system is nevertheless to pack them
all into the same house and pretend that they are happy, and that this
particular sort of happiness is the foundation of virtue, it is found
that in discussing family life we never speak of actual adults or actual
children, or of realities of any sort, but always of ideals such as
The Home, a Mother's Influence, a Father's Care, Filial Piety, Duty,
Affection, Family Life, etc. etc., which are no doubt very comforting
phrases, but which beg the question of what a home and a mother's
influence and a father's care and so forth really come to in practice.
How many hours a week of the time when his children are out of bed does
the ordinary bread-winning father spend in the company of his children
or even in the same building with them? The home may be a thieves'
kitchen, the mother a procuress, the father a violent drunkard; or the
mother and father may be fashionable people who see their children three
or four times a year during the holidays, and then not oftener than
they can help, living meanwhile in daily and intimate contact with their
valets and lady's-maids, whose influence and care are often dominant in
the household. Affection, as distinguished from simple kindliness, may
or may not exist: when it does it either depends on qualities in the
parties that would produce it equally if they were of no kin to one
another, or it is a more or less morbid survival of the nursing passion;
for affection between adults (if they are really adult in mind and not
merely grown-up children) and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel
as children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be
called natural: in fact the evidence shews that it is easier to love the
company of a dog than of a commonplace child between the ages of six and
the beginnings of controlled maturity; for women who cannot bear to be
separated from their pet dogs send their children to boarding schools
cheerfully. They may say and even believe that in allowing their
children to leave home they are sacrificing themselves for their
children's good; but there are very few pet dogs who would not be
the better for a month or two spent elsewhere than in a lady's lap or
roasting on a drawingroom hearthrug. Besides, to allege that children
are better continually away from home is to give up the whole popular
sentimental theory of the family; yet the dogs are kept and the children
are banished.