How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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to find another completely trustworthy human being of the opposite sex, and finally inspired to find a life-work as a source of personal salvation, his social adjustment is destined to be incomplete or distorted. The problem of initiation into human fellowship and the problem of reconciling the child not only to both sexes but to the vital necessity of work is a problem which is far too difficult for many parents. Some parents have never solved these problems themselves. A mother who has been a very spoiled child will tend to spoil her own child. She is hardly equipped to give the child an objective measure of love. A father who has made a failure of marriage will not encourage his son, and will look askance at his daughter as a potential menace to his sex. Parents who have never agreed about the educational needs of their children will be emotionally incapable of compromise and concession toward them. Parents who disagree consciously or unconsciously make personal partisans of their children, and herein lies the great fallacy of those who say, “ We wrould have been divorced a long time ago except for the children. We think they ought to have a home ! It would be safer for such parents to leave their children in the rattlesnake cage at the zoo. Fathers who are failures in business are not capable of inspiring their sons with a sense of joy in work. In fact every emotional twist, every personality warp of the parents makes itself felt in the development of the personality of the children. Perhaps there is no more discouraging factor in the determination of a child’s character than the emotional astigmatism of parents, for while other vicious factors are sometimes escapable by a change of environment, the child cannot escape from the poisonous atmosphere of a neurotic home life. Parental Mistakes The commonest emotional warps of parents may be classed under three heads. The first comprises hate, indifference, apathy, antipathy, and resentment. The