SELFISH LOVE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 831, 27 November 1929, Page 5

SELFISH LOVE

Mothers Who Are Exacting

CHILDHOOD’S RIGHTS “Every child should be treated as an individual, with potentialities, with the right to be loved, and taught how to love,” says Dame Henrietta Barnett. The right to be loved. “But I do love my child." says thg devoted mother, fiercely. "I worship him.” Yet I somehow do not believe that is the type of love to which Dame Barnett refers. I have seen so many savagely-devoted mothers, who denied themselves all manner of joy’s to shower their affection upon their sou and yet denied him the right to be loved, too.

Such a one is the mother who keeps her boy from school because she thinks the others are too rough, but who, in reality, knows that it would mean separation from her influence, the mother who, in her selfish adoration, wants her boy for herself and herself only, and loves him in a purely demanding and egotistical manner. . . . Children have the right to something more than that. They have a right to the sacrifical love which metes to them the best for their own future. Mothers may not realise it, but the very fact that they are mothers means that they have had their heydey. It is the new life which is entitled to the future that should not be kept close clenched in the mother’s palm. “My boy is going to be this, that, or the other,” declares mother. “He knows how much I want it.” Poor boy! brought up from the nursery with it being dinned into his little head. 1 love you so much, darling, you don’t want to disappoint me, do you?” What can he do? But that is not love, not tlje love the child has a right to demand; it is pure selfishness. LIVING ONE’S OWN LIFE We have each of us a right to our life. We are individuals, and the child, because he is a child, is no less an individual and no less capable of likes and dislikes and of making a choice. Loving guidance is a different matter from dogmatic persuasion. Mothers are dogmatic, they are persistent, and they have a wild desire to live their children’s lives for them. It cannot work. Later, a child has a right to love. He chooses his child friend, later he chooses his sweetheart. And how many mothers weep bitter tears and mourn and make life a misery for the boy. They persist that the girl is not good enough, that they will never be happy, that she is doing all this for his good. In reality what it really boils down to is that she does not like the girl. Sne wants to choose his wife as she has chosen his life. Mother wants to be a dominant factor in the boy's being, she cannot and will not take the back seat which will enthrone her for ever in his heart.