A passage from Henry Adams’ The Education of Henry Adams: “From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy’s will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.”
James Broughton’s memoir, Coming Unbuttoned: “Although I was born cheerful, my mother did her utmost to beat the cheer out of me.”
If I had read these passages when I was a young parent, I wonder what my attitude would be toward my children.
