In any event, the
relation between parent and child must never be brought down to the
level of one of bestowal and acceptance of bounty and the obligations
thereby entailed. The highest magnanimity is needed on the part of
parents, so deep and uncancellable is the debt of children,--by
parents to be obliterated from memory, by children to be translated
into the things of life.

CHAPTER XI

THE OBSESSION OF POSSESSION

The undemocratic character of the home reveals itself in a way that is
familiar enough,--the way of parental possession. Nothing could be
more difficult for parents to abandon than the sense of ownership,
tenderly conceived and graciously fostered. And yet, hard as the
lesson may be, it must be learned by parents that the spirit of
proprietorship cannot coexist with the democratic temper in the home.

I sometimes regret that children are not born full-grown, that they do
not subsequently develop or devolve into babies, so that the earliest
aspect of a child, diminutive, helpless, should not, as it does, evoke
the sense of absolute and exclusive ownership. If children would only
at six months or a year begin to argue, vigorously to combat their
parents' views, the ordinary transition from bland acquiescence to
over-facile dissent would be somewhat less harsh and startling. The
thing, which perhaps does most to intensify the shock and pain
incidental to divergence of opinion, is that the first eight or ten
years of childhood give no intimation or little more than intimation
of the possibility of conflict in later years. The unresisting
acquiescence of children in never-ending bestowal of parental bounty
offers no hint of the possibility of future strife. The legal plea of
surprise might almost be offered up by parents, who find, as one of
them has expressed it, that, when children are young, they "stay put,"
can be found whenever sought. Later they neither stay nor are put, but
move tangentially and, it would seem by preference, into orbits of
their own,--and not always heavenly orbits.

Some parents never wean themselves nor even seek to do so from the
sense of proprietorship, which is sure to be rudely disturbed unless
parents are wise to yield it up. No grown, reasoning, self-respecting
person wishes to be or to be dealt with as a being in fief to another.
Ofttimes it proves exceedingly hard for fond parents to relinquish the
sense of ownership, for the latter is deeply satisfying and even