[Sidenote: Its sociological significance]
This aspect of the process of identification is one which, we may very reasonably expect, will tend to play an increasing rôle as mental development proceeds and men come to work more and more with distant ends in view. If this expectation is correct, the aspect in question is probably one of very great biological and sociological importance, for even under present conditions it is clearly of much value in stimulating effort and in fostering thoroughness, far-sightedness and care. If a man realises that on his labours are dependent not only his own happiness and well being but those of his children and his children's children, he possesses one of the highest but at the same time one of the most efficient incentives to truly moral conduct to which the developed human mind is open[213].
[Sidenote: The development of the child requires a corresponding readjustment of the parents' attitude]
[Sidenote: This is as necessary for the parent as for the child]
In order that the benefits and compensations attendant upon an identification of this sort may be achieved, it is necessary that there should take place a gradual change of attitude towards the child on the part of the parent--a change which is very necessary also upon other grounds. In the fourth and fifth chapters of this book we studied the manner in which the successful development of the child requires an ever increasing degree of emancipation from the ties of affection and dependence which bind him to the parent. The proper carrying out of this emancipation requires a corresponding loosening of the ties that bind the parent to the child, involving a readjustment in the direction of the parent's interests and affections. If the parent continues to lavish on the child, as he grows up, the same amount of attention and affection that he required in infancy, the normal development of the child's love impulses is liable to be very seriously impeded; and should the child, in spite of this difficulty, attain the stage of directing his love outside the family, the parent is bound to suffer disappointment at what appears to him (or at least to his unconscious mind) to be the thanklessness and faithlessness of his child, and to feel jealousy and hatred towards the person who has supplanted him in the child's affection. Similarly, should the parent too long or too extensively afford protection to the child, exercise authority over him or take over responsibility from him, the child will inevitably find it difficult to acquire the necessary degree of emancipation from the parent's care and jurisdiction; and should he after all succeed in acquiring such emancipation, the parent will certainly suffer as the result of being deprived all too suddenly and unwillingly of the directive power over the child which he had hitherto enjoyed, and of the outlet for his interests and emotional tendencies, which the care of a child had hitherto afforded. The extreme demands on the energies and affections of the parents (particularly on those of the mother) caused by the utter helplessness of the human infant grow progressively less as the child develops. The natural course of events demands therefore on the part of the parents a gradual modification, redistribution and redirection of the emotions and interests that centred round the child in its early life; an undue prolongation of the tendencies natural to the early days of parenthood must necessarily in the long run be detrimental to the true interest both of child and parent.