Paternal instinct

“ Of course it may be asserted that this evolution has taken the wrong direction, and is not an improvement. I think the contrary may be shown to be true. The paternal instinct is as important to the adolescent stages of man as the maternal is for the period of infancy. ”

“ it's the paternal instinct, Amory—celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.... ”

“ But the young that had even such slight care had a survival advantage over their rivals, and would transmit the rudimentary instinct to their offspring. Thus, given a start in that direction, natural selection, steadily favoring the more maternally disposed, produced species with a highly developed and long continuing maternal love. In similar manner but in lesser degree a paternal instinct was developed. The existence of these instincts implied the power of sympathy and altruistic action that is, action by one individual for another's welfare. ”

“ The Freudians have set up a great hullaballoo about creative activities as sublimations of the sex instinct, or as they would have it, the libido. That is their obsession, the confusion of the sex instinct, the instinct for sex life and satisfaction in the relation of the male to the female, with the maternal instinct. The paternal instinct bears the same relation to the maternal, as the breasts of the male do to those of the female, i.e., a functional hermaphrodite trait. The maternal instinct is the instinct to create, provide and care for offspring. ”

“ It has been shown that the desire for children, but more especially male children, which is a characteristic of all races the world over, is not motivated solely by the instinct of reproduction but also by the desire of the parent, and that generally the male parent, to possess a natural and obvious means to avenge himself of the wrongs done to him by his own father. ”

“ Into this world of reason, knowledge, skill, training and experience comes the baby, richer in each generation by a new and improved father. He is born and cherished, however, by the same kind of mother, bringing to her tremendous task no new tool worthy of the time, but merely the same old dwindling, overworked "maternal instinct." ”

“ Why then, seeing the inadequacy of instinct in all these lines, are we so sure of its infallible guidance in the care of babies? A modern human mother has far less instinct to guide her than her arboreal ancestors: the real advantage her babies profit by are obtained through the development of the father—in reason, in knowledge, in skill, in the prosperity and progress of the world he makes. ”

“ It seems to us that fathers more often learn to love their children through following the conduct prescribed by good form and pretending to love them, or through love of display, pride or by association, than through any "natural tendency."
The almost universality of the maternal instinct is proven by the peoples in the world today, for scarcely anybody would have a chance for existence if it were not for the care of the mothers. ”

“ For instance, the maternal instinct, although it leads in many cases to severe and sustained self-denial for the benefit of the offspring, is nevertheless clearly distinct from conscience. The mother in tending her young does so in obedience to an inherited instinct, and not from any fear of subsequent self-reproach if she leaves her family to perish. She follows the maternal instinct, so long as it continues in operation, just as she would follow any other instinct ”

“ The sequel of the sexual impulse is the formation of the family through the development of parental affection. This instinct is as strong in many of the lower animals as in human beings. In primitive conditions it is largely confined to the female parent, the father paying but slight attention to the welfare of his offspring. ”

“ The parental instinct is an instinct to give, and the answering instinct would be one to take--not to give in return. It is probably not instinctive for the child to do for the parent, but is it not instinctive for the child to take from the parent, and to look to the parent for what he wants? ”

“ It shows too, that a father is not to be trusted for natural instincts towards his offspring; for the mother wept, and it needed the control of her own mother, and strong necessity, to induce the weak-minded and misguided girl to consent to part with her offspring. ”

“ From these instincts directly spring some of the highest moral virtues. Self-sacrifice, along with a host of attendant virtues, is an immediate product of the instinct of parenthood; and "it is probable that these two instincts in conjunction, the reproductive and parental instincts, directly impel human beings to a greater sum of activity, effort, and toil, than all the other motives of human action taken together." [5] These instincts are specially the foundation of the Home. ”

“ Which is man devouring his own offspring. For to the parents belongs, once and for all, the dynamic reaction on the first plane of consciousness only, the reaction and relationship at the first four poles of dynamic consciousness. When the second, the farther plane of consciousness rouses into action, the relationship is with strangers. All human instinct and all ethnology will prove this to us. What sex-instinct there is in a child is always adverse to the parents. ”

“ The most primitive form of the sympathetic instincts is exhibited in the family. Here, however loose and variable the relation of man and wife may be, that of mother and child cannot, by its nature, be done away with or essentially changed. In this case, the sympathetic feeling springs immediately from the natural instinct, and the relation is the nucleus which makes possible the higher forms of family life. ”

“ A discovery; honour and renown for master and boys––no need for cane or imposition, for emulation is the best of all disciplinarians––and steady-going, quiet work, without any of the fatiguing excursions into new fields to which the craving for knowledge leads. 'How pleased the parents will be, too,' says Cognitus, for he knows that paternal love, now and then, looks for a little sustenance from paternal vanity, that the child who does well is dear. ”

“ The father makes the child an end, and himself the means of its existence. The child, in asking something of its father, does not apply to him as a being distinct from itself, a master, a person in general, but it applies to him in so far as he is dependent on, and determined by his paternal feeling, his love for his child. ”

“ Parenthood among mere animals is the result of instinct, and of that alone, but not so in the human race. Human beings naturally desire to make a home for themselves, and a home, in the fullest meaning of that word, means children and a "family circle." ”

“ Where there is too much sympathy, then the great voluntary centers of the spine are weak, the child tends to be delicate. Then the father by instinct supplies the roughness, the sternness which stiffens in the child the centers of resistance and independence, right from the very earliest days. Often, for a mere infant, it is the father's fierce or stern presence, the vibration of his voice, which starts the frictional and independent activity of the great voluntary ganglion [54] and gives the first impulse to the independence which later on is life itself. ”

“ Quite as frequently, perhaps, parental or maternal duties of a natural and important character are delegated or left to any other animal possessed of a sufficiently powerful charity or compassion, a sufficiently strong maternal or parental "instinct." The duties of parentage or otherwise may be simply left undischarged without the slightest regard to the results of such neglect; every opportunity may be taken of shirking work that is disagreeable, or a task of whatever nature is executed in a very perfunctory, perhaps merely nominal way. ”

“ His rights are measured to him by the theory of liberty—that is, he has only such as he can conquer; his duties are measured to him on the paternal theory—that is, he must discharge all which are laid upon him, as is the fortune of parents. In a paternal relation there are always two parties, a father and a child; and when we use the paternal relation metaphorically, it is of the first importance to know who is to be father and who is to be child. The rôle of parent falls always to the Forgotten Man. ”

“ Again the social and the maternal instincts and sympathy are identified and classed as under the dominion of the moral sense, pages 168-170: "It is evident, in the first place, that with mankind the instinctive impulses have different degrees of strength; a savage, will risk his own life to save that of a member of the same community, but will be wholly indifferent about a stranger; a young and timid mother urged by the maternal instinct will, without a moment's hesitation, run the greatest danger for her own infant, but not for a [Pg 10] mere fellow-creature. ”

“ Then again the greater length of time comes in: the parents love their offspring from the first moment of their being, but their offspring them only after a lapse of time when they have attained intelligence or instinct. These considerations serve also to show why mothers have greater strength of affection than fathers. ”

“ It is not purely instinctive, but depends on intelligence. It is only possible if the child has the intelligence to see the parent as something besides a parent--as some one needing care and protection--and if the child himself takes a parental attitude towards the parent. But that is a grown-up attitude, seldom taken by {151} young children. It is not the infantile instinct, which, if there is such an instinct, is the spring of trustful, docile, dependent, childlike and childish behavior. ”

“ The same is true of the parental instinct.
Thus in the case of every instinct the "just right" degree is personally valuable and socially useful; while excess or defect in the strength of the instinct is disadvantageous. ”

“ If parents forget what they are for, and try to foster a more than ordinary tie, they make themselves a menace to those whom they most love. Any exaggeration is abnormal. If the childhood bond is over-strong, or the childhood dependence too long cultivated, then the relationship has overstepped its purpose, and, as we shall later see, has laid the foundation for a future neurosis.
Mothering the World. Probably no instinct has so many ways of indirect expression as this mothering impulse of protection. ”

“ Parental, or, rather, maternal instinct is one, and perhaps the greatest source of "tender" altruistic emotion, of that disinterested love for and desire to protect the helpless which is the least egotistical and perhaps the loveliest of human sentiments. ”

“ It gives birth, too, to that noble instinct which leads the mother to expose her own life rather than suffer harm to come to her offspring. It produces, at least in man, that reciprocal attachment of offspring to parent, from which springs no small part of all that is holiest and best in this world. ”

“ The third stage, marked by the entrance of the father into the domestic community, does not affect our conclusion. In the animal world taken as a whole, paternal affection is rare and far from permanent, and among the lower representatives of humanity the feeling is a very weak one and the tie very loose. ”

“ Both his mental instincts and processes, and the conclusions to which they lead him, may be entirely different from the habits and conclusions of his father; and if the father is so utterly unphilosophical as to suppose (what vulgar fathers constantly do suppose) that his own mental habits and conclusions are the right ones, and all others wrong, then he will adopt a tone of authority towards his son, on certain occasions, which the young man will excusably consider unbearable and which he will avoid by shunning the paternal society. ”

“ In our every-day thinking we take it for granted. The child, we maintain, inherits its father's bad temper just as it inherits its mother's good looks. We consider twice before we adopt the foundling, which may be of dull or vicious parentage. We shake our heads over the wayward son, remembering that his father "sowed his wild oats," and we observe "like father like son," or "blood will tell." We expect to find talent in the children of the gifted, thrift or dwarfed intellect or high purpose, according as these qualities are "bred in the bone." ”

“ What instinct tells him spiritual insight confirms, however much the mind may be aware of littlenesses, limitations, and enclosing walls that prevent the spirit from shining forth. His spirit divines in all men what his instinct shows him in the object of his love.
The love of parents for children has need of the same transformation. The purely instinctive love, unchecked by thought, uninformed by spirit, is exclusive, ruthless, and unjust. No benefit to others is felt, by the purely instinctive parent, to be worth an injury to one's own children. ”

“ We are perfectly aware that scientific men will contest our position, insisting that both mother and father contribute equally to the offspring. We admit that they do so in a sense and yet we insist that there is a difference in their contribution. It is the father's soul-life that is perpetuated or reproduced. The mother loses her name in a human family, and her identity is merged into the family of the male. She becomes, as it were, a helper to the male to reproduce himself. ”

“ But on the other hand, the father, from his distance, supports, protects, nourishes his child, and it is ultimately on the remote but powerful father-love that the infant rests, in a rest which is beyond mother-love. ”

“ Among uneducated people paternal affection is seldom very strong toward an infant. Some culture of mind is necessary to realize all the indirect benefits the father at first confers. But, when the direct influence becomes considerable, the paternal affection augments and may assume a very great energy. Among animals paternal affection, I think, exists only in those species in which the father assists the mother in rearing and feeding the little ones, as, for instance, among birds. ”

“ Whatever, for instance, may be predicated of the maternal instinct in a hen may be predicated of the maternal sentiment in the human mother, and vice versâ, due allowance having been made for modifying conditions, for there are other instincts in the human mother, (for instance, that of shame at the dread of the discovery of a lapse from virtue,) which may enable her to overpower and extinguish the maternal sentiment—a state to which the hen, through the absence of other counteracting instincts, and from defects of reason, can never be brought. ”