A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind; and Mr. Locke very judiciously observes, that
'if the mind be curbed and humbled too much in children; if their spirits
be abased and broken much by too strict an hand over them; they lose all
their vigour and industry.' This strict hand may in some degree account
for the weakness of women; for girls, from various causes, are more kept
down by their parents, in every sense of the word, than boys. The duty
expected from them is, like all the duties arbitrarily imposed on women,
more from a sense of propriety, more out of respect for decorum, than
reason; and thus taught slavishly to submit to their parents, they are
prepared for the slavery of marriage. I may be told that a number of women
are not slaves in the marriage state. True, but they then become tyrants;
for it is not rational freedom, but a lawless kind of power resembling the
authority exercised by the favourites of absolute monarchs, which they
obtain by debasing means. I do not, likewise, dream of insinuating that
either boys or girls are always slaves, I only insist that when they are
obliged to submit to authority blindly, their faculties are weakened, and
their tempers rendered imperious or abject. I also lament that parents,
indolently availing themselves of a supposed privilege, damp the first
faint glimmering of reason, rendering at the same time the duty, which
they are so anxious to enforce, an empty name; because they will not let
it rest on the only basis on which a duty can rest securely: for unless it
be founded on knowledge, it cannot gain sufficient strength to resist the
squalls of passion, or the silent sapping of self-love. But it is not the
parents who have given the surest proof of their affection for their
children, or, to speak more properly, who by fulfilling their duty, have
allowed a natural parental affection to take root in their hearts, the
child of exercised sympathy and reason, and not the over-weening offspring
of selfish pride, who most vehemently insist on their children submitting
to their will merely because it is their will. On the contrary, the
parent, who sets a good example, patiently lets that example work; and it
seldom fails to produce its natural effect -- filial reverence.
