A Treatise on Parents and Children

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.