A matter of no less importance is that parents should beware lest any feelings of jealousy which they themselves may harbour with regard to the children, should be allowed to exercise an undue influence over their own conduct. There is less excuse for the existence of such feelings in the parent than there is in the child, inasmuch as the former possesses, or should possess, greater integration and maturity of mind and a more thorough understanding of the nature of his acts and of their consequences; and in addition there is less real cause for jealousy, since the parent is himself responsible for the child's existence, and since, with the superior capacities of the adult, he has less need--at any rate within a happy marriage--to fear the child as a serious rival for the affections of his partner.
[Sidenote: By suitable measures the friction between parents and children can be greatly reduced, though never entirely abolished]
In spite of all such precautions however, it is probable that it will always prove an impossibility to prevent altogether the arousal of some degree of hostility on the part of the child towards the parent of his own sex. The nature of the antagonism between the two individuals in question is too deeply rooted in human motives and human institutions to be without some consequences even under the most favourable circumstances. All that can reasonably be hoped for is that such degree of jealousy as may be unavoidable may throughout be held in check by feelings of affection, and that it may eventually pass away, with the gradual weaning of the child from the exclusive direction of its love towards the other parent.
Still less perhaps can parents expect to avoid altogether the arousal of hatred due to causes other than jealousy. The only method of doing so would be to refrain from all appreciable interference with the child's tendencies and impulses, while fulfilling all its wants. This, however, is an obvious psychological, social and ethical impossibility. The desires of the child conflict too much with the comfort of the parents and with the established usages of society to be allowed free play, and even if the granting of free play were possible, it would not be in all respects desirable, since the proper education of the child undoubtedly requires some degree of extraneous interference. Nevertheless we are beginning to realise that such interference need often be less irksome than was previously supposed. The old idea that education, to be profitable, must be unpleasant, is now probably abandoned by all thoughtful students of education, even in its application to early childhood--a period in which the extreme immaturity of the mind and the remoteness of its aspirations from those of the culture the rudiments of which it is starting to acquire would seem to make the process of training almost necessarily difficult and disagreeable. Dr. Montessori and others are showing how the education of the young child can be brought about both more effectually and more pleasantly by the substitution of guidance for restriction, and by linking on the activities which have to be learnt to those in which the child naturally and spontaneously indulges; while the possibilities of education on similar principles in the case of older children have been very successfully demonstrated in the case of the George Junior Republic and the Little Commonwealth. In so far as the more general control and instruction exercised by parents can be conducted on the same lines, the friction between parents and children that arises as a consequence of this necessary control will tend to diminish, though the total avoidance of such friction will scarcely ever be attained.