Few inquiries can have greater interest or importance than the inquiry, why there is not more generally between parents and children that warm, ingenuous, abiding affection which produces a full and joyous friendship. A clear perception and statement of the difficulties in the way of it may suggest the means of removing them. And, in the outset, is it not obvious that the home affections flourish so scantily because scanty attention is paid to the cultivation of them? It is forever the fallacy and folly of man to think least of that which lies nearest to him, and is the most indissolubly bound up with his being as a cause of happiness or of misery. He thinks most eagerly on those comparatively exceptional and remote things, which, in consequence of their greatness or their rarity, are the strangest and the most impressive to him. He ought to pay the keenest heed to that which is the most important in its influence on his life, not to that which is the most startling to his fancy. Now, it is unquestionably true, that while there is nothing which contributes so much to enrich or to impoverish us, to bless or to curse us, as our domestic relations, there is scarcely any thing which we take less pains to cultivate into all that it is capable of becoming. In most instances, the life of the home is so close to us, so identified with ourselves, accepted with such a matter of course security, that we overlook the delicate conditions for preserving its freshness and securing its increase. But, in every relation of persons, there are two sets of conditions, corresponding with the two sides, neither of which can be neglected with impunity. There are a multitude of homes which are centres of irritation and wretchedness, miniature hells to their occupants.
The first thing to be done is to turn thought to the subject, break up the apathy of routine, secure an earnest appreciation of the facts in the case, and then study the remedy.
One great obstacle to the desired friendships of parents and children consists in the difficulty of a perfect sympathy between persons marked by such differences of age, position, interest, and experience. Those of the same years, passions, pleasures, duties, will naturally sympathize the most easily. But in all these respects the disparities of parent and child are equally numerous and striking.