Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/52

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ABOUT PEOPLE.

tages of the relation between parents and children have often been obstructed by a semi-religious sentiment. The parent's obligation to the child is far greater than that of the child to the parent; parental disregard of the child's individualism springing often from his feeling that the child is a direct gift to him from God, and that responsibility is lessened in proportion to unconscious exercise of any duty or capacity. God is the great law-maker, but the execution of his human laws he leaves to man, whose responsibility of giving to each child the opportunity for full development is thereby increased a thousand-fold. To the child who never asked to be born, should a wise, free growth be allowed just as long as the parent lives. What right has one to bring an individual soul into the world and then through affection needlessly curb it? The child's obedience used to be demanded on the ground of authority involved in the relationship of birth; now it is demanded on the ground of

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