A Treatise on Parents and Children

There is, however, a good deal of spurious family affection. There is / the clannishness that will make a dozen brothers and sisters who quarrel / furiously among themselves close up their ranks and make common cause / against a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law. And there is a strong sense / of property in children, which often makes mothers and fathers bitterly / jealous of allowing anyone else to interfere with their children, whom / they may none the less treat very badly. And there is an extremely / dangerous craze for children which leads certain people to establish / orphanages and baby farms and schools, seizing any pretext for filling / their houses with children exactly as some eccentric old ladies and / gentlemen fill theirs with cats. In such places the children are the / victims of all the caprices of doting affection and all the excesses / of lascivious cruelty. Yet the people who have this morbid craze seldom / have any difficulty in finding victims. Parents and guardians are so / worried by children and so anxious to get rid of them that anyone who / is willing to take them off their hands is welcomed and whitewashed.

The very people who read with indignation of Squeers and Creakle in the / novels of Dickens are quite ready to hand over their own children / to Squeers and Creakle, and to pretend that Squeers and Creakle / are monsters of the past. But read the autobiography of Stanley the / traveller, or sit in the company of men talking about their school-days, / and you will soon find that fiction, which must, if it is to be sold and / read, stop short of being positively sickening, dare not tell the whole / truth about the people to whom children are handed over on educational / pretexts. Not very long ago a schoolmaster in Ireland was murdered by / his boys; and for reasons which were never made public it was at / first decided not to prosecute the murderers. Yet all these flogging / schoolmasters and orphanage fiends and baby farmers are "lovers of / children. " They are really child fanciers (like bird fanciers or dog / fanciers) by irresistible natural predilection, never happy unless they / are surrounded by their victims, and always certain to make their living / by accepting the custody of children, no matter how many alternative / occupations may be available. And bear in mind that they are only / the extreme instances of what is commonly called natural affection, / apparently because it is obviously unnatural.